Try to live normal
by TheLuciferPerson
Summary: KHR in an ordinary HS setting. No Mafia, no supernatural things, just raging teenage sexuality -gay/straight- and identity-seeking and trying to get by. It's the real world and it's more than enough of a challenge. Maybe, if they keep looking, they'll be able to get what they so desperately want.
1. Chapter 1

**Hey people. Wow, I haven't written anything in ages, so if this story is a bit weird, please forgive me. I usually write very dark, serious stories with the Vongola members being adults, but I decided to do one in a normal high school setting this time. Hope it goes over well.**

* * *

Gokudera sauntered into the Namimori High School math classroom just as the bell rang. Tsuna looked up from his seat, relieved that one of his few friends hadn't gotten killed by Hibari for not having his uniform correctly on or some other small offense that Gokudera seemed to always be committing.

Gokudera sat down in one of the only empty seats that were left: a desk three across from Tsuna and two up from Yamamoto. He quickly scribbled a note on a piece of notebook paper and flicked it across to Tsuna.

Tsuna, glancing nervously at the teacher, opened the crumpled note.

_Hey, you want to go to that new Italian restaurant that just opened down town? Today is its grand opening, I think._

Tsuna quickly scribbled a note back and flicked it across as well as he could.

_Sure! But there's a home baseball game today and I promised Yamamoto that I would go. And don't you have archery practice? Perhaps for afters?_

Gokudera waited until the math teacher had turned back around to the chalkboard before throwing the note back in a deft movement.

_K then. After the game. If I don't die of boredom first that is. And there's no archery practice today because the coach is out sick or something. _

From his seat two desks back from Gokudera's, Yamamoto watched the exchange although he could not know what they were talking about. He couldn't stop thinking about the home game that was going to be right after school. It was against one of their biggest rival schools, Osaka High School, and they were known for having very competitive sports teams.

He was excited to play against Osaka, but he couldn't help feeling that maybe he would be able to get psyched a bit more if he had someone, a specific someone, to play for and who he knew would be supporting him and only him.

'It would be so nice if dad could come, but I know he can't,' Yamamoto thought, completely zoning out. 'What with the new Italian restaurant opening across the street from us, he'll probably have to work double time to keep up the competition.'

A crop of spiky brown hair caught his eye as Tsuna frantically bobbed his head up and down while trying to write down notes.

'Tsuna will be coming to my game so that's nice, and he's alright, but he's just my friend. If I'm playing for someone, that someone should be more than just a friend, right?'

A few meters in front of him, Gokudera ran his fingers through his hair and effortlessly answered a question that the teacher had shot at him.

'Gokudera will be coming to the game, I bet, because he does a lot of things with Tsuna. He's my friend too, but he's a bit of a challenge and I can't quite figure him out. He's really quite an interesting character. Doesn't like baseball, I don't think. Maybe I could pretend to be playing for him in order to convince him that baseball is actually really awesome? Yeah, that might be –'

"Yamamoto Takeshi! Yamamoto! I asked you a question!" said the irritated teacher, throwing a piece of chalk at the absentminded baseball player and pointing at a question he had written on the board. "What's the answer to this question?"

"Uh…," Yamamoto scratched his head and smiled, absolutely clueless. "Give me a minute…"

Gokudera coughed loudly and stretched his shoulders back, throwing his hand behind him as he did so. His hand had three fingers out, Yamamoto noticed.

"Uh…three?" Yamamoto said, widening his smile hopefully. Gokudera tossed his head, and Yamamoto knew that he must be either smirking in satisfaction or rolling his eyes in exasperation.

The teacher huffed. "That is correct, Yamamoto. Lucky guess, was it?"

Yamamoto just laughed and decided to shut down his brain for the rest of class and get some rest before the big game.

* * *

As soon as the end of class bell rang, Yamamoto was out the door, running for the lockers. After meeting up with his teammates, changing, and warming up, he walked out onto the field. When it was his turn to step up to bat, he tried to calm his pounding heartbeat. The Osaka team was far better than he had thought. The second he stepped up to bat, the girls from the home bleachers let out a united scream that very near well killed his ears but which didn't boost his confidence at all.

He looked at the Osaka pitcher. Having watched his teammates before him strike out multiple times, he knew that this pitcher was scarily good. He quickly looked to the bleachers and tried to find someone special to play for. He tried to ignore the senseless screaming of the girls.

The pitcher threw. Yamamoto swung and the bat grazed the ball but didn't hit it straight on. When he looked to the stand, Tsuna, with his hair standing up more than ever, was frantically waving his arms at him from the front row.

The pitcher threw again. Yamamoto swung and this time, the bat did hit the ball but the ball went off the field to the side as a foul. Cursing under his breath, he looked to the stand again. Gokudera was motionlessly sitting next to Tsuna, with his head turned to the side as though he thought the baseball field could use some improvements.

"Yamamoto Takeshi! Yamamoto Takeshi!" The girls on the stands were now chanting his name, but Yamamoto kept his eyes fixed on Gokudera. The silverette opened his mouth in what was almost definitely a sigh.

'What could he possibly be sighing about? It's not his team that's losing or him that's this close to striking out!' thought Yamamoto, panicking.

The pitcher threw for the third time. Yamamoto swung. And struck out.

As he sadly went back to the player bench and was sympathetically slapped on the back by his teammates, he could have sworn that he saw Gokudera laughing.

* * *

After losing the game and taking a speedy shower in the locker room, Yamamoto went up to meet Tsuna and Gokudera at the school gates. Tsuna looked nervous, clutching at his backpack straps, as though he was worried that Yamamoto was seriously upset at losing. Gokudera was sitting on top of the school's brick wall, straddling a post, and looking up at the sky as though he was trying to stare it down.

"Ah…Yamamoto! I'm sorry about this game, but maybe next time, huh?" Tsuna smiled up at him tentatively.

"Well, it's only one game, after all. It's nothing. We'll beat them next time!"

Gokudera jumped down from the wall with a smirk. "Maybe, if you would quit looking over at the bleachers! Seriously, I don't know why you kept looking towards us as though you thought we had the answer to the universe or something."

Yamamoto playfully shoved Gokudera as they started walking to where the restaurants were. "Yeah, well, I was trying to get moral support! Besides, we'll see with you! You have a competition against Osaka two days from today, don't you? Monday, right?"

"Yeah, well. At least I'll actually be looking at my target, won't I?" Gokudera retorted, tossing his head to get his bangs out of his eyes.

As they started passing the shops and restaurants that they weren't going to go to, Yamamoto expressed his worries about the new restaurant.

"I don't know if you guys know, but there's a new restaurant coming on this street, and it's almost directly across the street from my dad's sushi place. It's not another sushi place or anything, it's an Italian place, but it's still really close to my dad's restaurant and my dad's pretty worried about the new competition."

Gokudera had his head cocked to the side, a sign that he was thinking about something seriously. "Oh, is that new place just across your dad's restaurant? I wasn't aware of that." He sniffed and shrugged his shoulders.

When they got to the new Italian restaurant, Tsuna stopped and looked confusedly at Gokudera when he kept on walking. "Uh… Gokudera, isn't this the restaurant that you said that you wanted to go to? It's that Italian restaurant!"

Speaking over his shoulder and trying to ignore the delicious smells that was coming from said Italian restaurant, Gokudera said, "That restaurant is sure to be shit, Tsuna. Good Italian food can't be found anywhere except in Italy anyways. Come on, I feel up for sushi now."

Yamamoto immediately brightened. "Really? You mean it? My dad will be really happy to see you!"

The three of them trooped in the Yamamoto sushi restaurant, Yamamoto beaming happily at his friends' patronage, Gokudera wearing a poker face, and Tsuna scratching his head confusedly.

* * *

**So what'd you think? BTW, this sort of tactful readjusting of behavior is very important in Asian culture. The way that Gokudera pretends not to be interested in the Italian place because he knows that Yamamoto is worried about his dad's sushi place is called "nunchi" in Korean (I'm Korean).**

**Review, please!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey guys. This is a rather lengthy chapter; I've really gotten into this story! **

**There's some sexual themes in this chapter near the end, but it's nothing graphic, and it's quite natural and normal for teenagers around the world (hence the title of this story: "Try to live normal").**

**Hope you like it.**

* * *

"Oh wow, I don't think I've ever eaten so much since the time your dad treated us when it was your birthday, Yamamoto!" said Tsuna, rubbing his stomach.

Gokudera was pacing around the restaurant after cleaning his plate because it was his habit to try to get the food down by walking around after eating.

"Yeah, I know. Your dad keeps on making these little improvements like the extra condiments and the little flower thing that he did with the wasabi," he said, waving his hand in the general direction of his table while wandering around the now closed restaurant.

Yamamoto got up to join Gokudera, stretching his sore shoulders in the process. "I don't think anyone but you noticed those improvements, actually! I'll be sure to let my dad know. He'll be thrilled!" he exclaimed, waving his arms excitedly.

Then the baseball player clutched his shoulder. "Ow, I think I jerked my shoulder a little too roughly while I was swinging the bat."

"Well, that's what you get when you look off to the _stands_ instead of at the ball that you were _supposed_ to be hitting," teased Gokudera. "Seriously though, if it hurts, put some ice on it. This is a raw fresh fish place, there's bound to be a load of ice somewhere here."

"Maybe you're right," said Yamamoto, before disappearing into the kitchens to get a cold-pack.

Tsuna patted his stomach for the last time and slowly got up. "Wow, it's so late! The restaurant must have closed a long time ago!"

"Well, tomorrow's the weekend, so no need to rush home, I guess," drawled Gokudera, who was now spinning himself in lazy circles over a cleaned tabletop.

"Yeah, but still. My mom will worry. I haven't told her that I'll be home late or anything," said Tsuna with a worried expression.

Gokudera shrugged. "It doesn't matter for me what time I get to my place, but if it bothers you, we'll tell Yamamoto that we're going when he gets back. Jeez, how god damn long does it take to scoop a bunch of ice into a plastic bag?"

Yamamoto appeared from behind the opaque plastic sheet that separated the kitchen from the rest of the restaurant. "Oh, you guys are going?"

Gokudera shouldered his backpack. "Yeah, Tsuna says he needs to get back." He put his hand to his back pocket where his wallet was.

Yamamoto walked over and strapped the archer's arms down to his sides. "No need, no need! It's on the house."

Gokudera shrugged out of his friend's grip. "Are you kidding me? Tsuna and I just ate so much that we probably just cleaned out your dad's restaurant."

"We're supposed to start fresh every day, cuz this is a professional sushi place, so it's actually good that you cleaned out my dad's restaurant. Seriously, I'm telling you it's on the house."

"Who cares?" shot Gokudera, as he slapped down the correct amount for his meal on the counter top and motioned for Tsuna to do the same. Tsuna weakly reached for his own wallet and followed suit.

"Aw, you guys, you didn't need to," said Yamamoto, absolutely beaming.

"Like hell we didn't," sniffed Gokudera, putting his wallet back in his back pocket. "Well, good night, I guess. We're going."

"Wait, I'll come with you! Dad, I'll be back in a few, okay?" Yamamoto called over his aching shoulder as he hurried after his two friends into the darkening streets.

* * *

Since Tsuna's house was closer, the three of them headed to Tsuna's address first. As they walked along the largely empty street, Tsuna squinted at something in the distance.

"What is it?" said Gokudera, a little crankily. He was getting tired and wasn't looking forward to going to his empty house.

"Oh, nothing," said Tsuna, giggling a little nervously with a touch of hysteria. "I just thought I saw Kyoko, that's all." He gazed dreamily off into the distance.

Gokudera shrugged and shoved his hands a little deeper in his pockets, and Yamamoto laughed and playfully hit Tsuna on the shoulder. "You like her, huh? What do you think is so great about her?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Tsuna, blushing and glancing at Gokudera and Yamamoto in turn. "She's just really sweet and she's so nice to me. She's just really…cute, you know? Don't you think she's really cute?"

The spiky brown-haired glanced at his two friends anxiously, hoping and wanting that they think that Kyoko be cute as well, but not wanting that they not think her to be too cute for fear of losing her to one of them.

Yamamoto just laughed. "Well, I don't know. I guess she's alright."

"Got a bit of a flat chest, though, doesn't she? I thought you might like Haru, Tsuna. She's a bit bustier anyways," said Gokudera nonchalantly, unaware of the flame that he sent across Tsuna's cheeks with his comment.

Yamamoto laughed even harder than before. "Oh stop it, Gokudera. You're making Tsuna blush. I don't think he thinks about Kyoko that way anyways. Do you?" Tsuna blushed even deeper. "Oh, he does!"

"Of course he does. He likes her, doesn't he? He probably masturbates to her," said Gokudera impatiently, inadvertently making Tsuna blush even harder.

"But nevermind, Tsuna," said Gokudera, as a means of awkward apology when he noticed how embarrassed he was making Tsuna. "She's got a perky ass so that should make up for it, eh?"

Yamamoto practically howled with laughter. "Is that the way your mother taught you to think?" he whooped, doubling over in his mirth. "Just how, uh, _big_ are your broads?" he joked, cupping his hands over his chest in a crude parody of breasts.

Gokudera sobered down almost immediately at the mention of his mother, but smiled a little in embarrassment and flushed slightly. He shoved the still guffawing Yamamoto. "Aw, shut up and stop making me out to be such a pervert. Don't pretend that you don't think about things like that sometimes!"

"Alright guys, both of you stop!" shrieked Tsuna, whose face now resembled a ripe tomato. "What if someone hears us?" he hissed.

Gokudera, now calming down, shoved his hands back in his pockets and did his character shrug of the shoulders. "They'll know that we're just your average seventeen year olds, that's what. We're hormonal teenagers, aren't we? We're allowed to notice things and get horny sometimes," he said, shrugging again.

Yamamoto bumped shoulders with Tsuna. "Do you get horny to Kyoko, Tsuna?" he teased.

Tsuna covered his face with his hands and shook his bowed head. Any moment now, he was sure, his mom would show up out of nowhere and think that he was nothing but a horndog!

"Alright, alright, we'll stop teasing you, Tsuna," said Gokudera. "And don't worry. Neither of us like Kyoko, so she's all yours. Right, Yamamoto?"

"Right, right," confirmed Yamamoto, still panting from laughing so hard. "And I don't like Haru either, in case you change your mind, Tsuna. Neither of them are my type."

Tsuna, still shaking his head in embarrassment, waved a weak goodbye to his friends as they reached his house. "See you tomorrow, then, guys!" he called from the doorway.

"See ya, Tsuna. Good night," called the other two as they turned the corner to circle around to Gokudera's place.

* * *

Gokudera and Yamamoto walked quietly on for a while, just enjoying the breezy autumn night when suddenly Gokudera snorted a laugh.

"Neither of them are your _type_? What _is_ your type, then, you big baseball idiot? I mean, you could practically choose any girl in the school from the looks of the crowd that you had going for you today."

Yamamoto laughed. "Actually, you bring up a pretty good point. I _was_ actually looking for someone special in the crowd today. It sounds incredibly sappy, but I sort of wished that I could be like one of those Dark Ages knights when they had a lady give them a token of luck, like a handkerchief or something, and I was thinking that maybe it'd be nice to have something like that."

"Oh, so is that why you kept on looking over to the bleachers? I was wondering about that cuz you just looked so distracted during the game. So you want some girl to give you a token? Hell, just hold out your hand and you're bound to get at least _something_, I bet. That's not hard," said the silver-headed boy, tossing his head again to clear his bangs from his line of vision.

"Yeah, well. It doesn't mean anything if you just get a thing from a person you don't really know. It has to be someone you like and who likes you back, see, that's why a token is supposed to be lucky."

"Lucky tokens my ass. No token will make my shot accuracy any sharper. Practice will," Gokudera said seriously, showing his own anxiety with the archery match against Osaka that would be in a two days.

Then he grinned. "If you want a lucky charm so bad, just wear the rotting underpants under your bed that look like they haven't been washed since the beginning of the last millennium. Maybe the new species of bacteria that have no doubt germinated there will whisper you the way to actually hit the ball."

"Eww! That's nasty, Gokudera. And what do you know of my underpants?"

"Don't think I didn't notice them that one time when you invited Tsuna and me over to your house! You shoved them under your bed but they were still visible, thank you very much, and I could have probably fucking smelled them out if I hadn't seen them!" Gokudera retorted, rolling his eyes.

"Oh dear god," gasped Yamamoto, who had to stop walking as he was now doubled over in laughter. "I am _not_ that messy!"

"Mhm," said Gokudera, unconvinced, as he kept on walking. "Whatever you say, except you know, not really. Anyways, I can take it from here, Yamamoto. See ya tomorrow, then."

"See ya. Good night!" called Yamamoto, as he started running back to his father's sushi restaurant. It was now getting to be quite dark.

* * *

Gokudera walked along the alleyway to his house slowly until he was sure that Yamamoto had turned the corner to the big street and was out of sight. Then he turned around and went back the way he came. He didn't want to go to his cold, empty, storage closet of a house, but there was nowhere he could go at this time without bothering someone, so he went to the local park as usual.

As he swung slowly on one of the creaky swings of the playground park, Gokudera lazily looked at the red stubs of cigarettes hovering against the black background of trees and cloudy sky that were around him. The red burning flints of light were like fiery fireflies hovering around the secret smokers that gathered here almost every night.

They were familiar with Gokudera, as he was with them, as regular inhabitants of the dusky playground and so they watched each other through the corner of their eyes carefully but emotionlessly, without either hostility or kindness. There was only ever the constant suspicion and curiosity as to why any of them were out here at this time.

One after another, the cigarette fireflies fell to the ground and were stomped out of what feeble life they might have imaginatively possessed. Soon, it was just Gokudera on the swing, the random passerby on the sidewalk, or a lonely car or bus going back to wherever they started from each day.

Then a flickering of the street light off to the side alerted the tired adolescent of a fellow occupant of the park.

There was a bus terminal sign a little off to the side, and as it was directly under a streetlamp, the occupant, a young man, was clearly visible. Gokudera watched the newcomer with a drugged interest; he was now almost exhausted enough to have no choice but to head back to his house.

The person next to the bus terminal sign alternated between standing next to the post and sitting down on one of the waiting benches for the bus. Despite the slightly chilly weather and the definite breeze that now whistled through the street with the coming of the fall monsoon winds, the young man was wearing only a navy sleeveless undershirt that looked to have a hole in the side and a pair of worn baggy tan shorts that looked dirty. His dark hair, however, appeared to have been arranged into a carefully messed-up spiky hairstyle. It seemed to the only thing that was really put-together on the man.

Gokudera had the feeling that he had perhaps seen the man, who looked slight and a little under the weather, in other similarly sketchy places such as in the rare lit corners of distant small winding streets. The man crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned on the terminal sign and stared out to the main street, looking as though he was cold, possibly hungry, and was impatiently looking for someone to pick him up.

A couple of cars passed by and Gokudera noticed how the man's head turned to follow each of the cars as they sped past him and shifted his position every time one passed by as though he was growing more and more desperate for someone, anyone, to come along and take him.

Then one car came creeping up the street. It was moving noticeably slowly, almost obviously so, and it came to a rather hesitant stop on the far side of the street from the bus stop and the young man. After a pause, the mirrored window of the driver's seat came down and the driver, a balding, fleshy middle-aged man, poked his head out and turned it quickly from side to side as though he was watching out for someone.

Gokudera watched, now having stopped swinging, as the middle-aged man in the car put his hand out of the window and crooked his fingers in a come-here motion after he had checked that the coast was clear. The young man at the bus stop immediately stopped slouching on the terminal sign and briskly moved towards the car, one hand adjusting his hair as he went.

The young man leaned down close at the window to speak with the car driver, and although Gokudera was too far away to make out what they were saying over the wind, he thought it quite apparent from both of their stiff, nervously jerky movements that the two had not previously met and had not even been the vaguest of acquaintances before this night. Gokudera couldn't help noticing that the tan shorts that had previously seemed baggy and loose were now stretched tight over the skinny man's ass now that he had bent over.

Nevertheless, after a moment, the young man seemed comfortable enough with his new companion to stand up halfway upright at half a meter's distance from the car and allow his tan shorts to slip down lower on him so that his hips showed. One of his hands played with the ends of his undershirt. His other hand reached inside the car, and although it was out of Gokudera's sight, the movements of the rest of the visible arm suggested that the spiky-haired man was caressing the driver's neck.

Some pieces of paper which must have been money passed from the chubby hand of the driver to the skinny hand of the bus terminal man at the edge of the car window. Although it could not be heard over the wind, Gokudera imagined that the crackling of dry leaves around him were the sound of the crumpled bills being shoved deep into the back pocket of the tan shorts which had now become baggy again now that the young man had stood up.

The man walked around the car and got in the shotgun seat. The car sped away.

After witnessing this odd exchange, Gokudera too got up and made his way to his own house.

* * *

It wasn't until the silver-haired adolescent was very nearly all the way to his house that he foggily realized that he had just seen a male prostitute. He had just witnessed a transaction between a male prostitute and his customer. His tired mind suddenly cleared.

Gokudera thought of the car driving away, the prostitute's hand perhaps on the balding man's neck again, or perhaps on his crotch, or perhaps simply in the back pocket of the tan shorts and gripping the money that he now had to earn.

He thought of the two driving up at a small, cheap motel that would have barely anything except a crappy TV, a mattress with some low-grade sheets, and a single cabinet with nothing but mothballs and a Bible. He thought of the tight round ass that must be under the unflattering shorts and the flat stomach that the man had teased the driver with; how the young man would take his clothes off. The prostitute would stop teasing with the ends of the undershirt and would strip it off with one sweeping movement of the arm, or perhaps he would hold still with his arms up as he let the middle-aged man take his shirt off for him. Maybe he would get out his shorts one leg at a time or would just drop the shorts down and step out of them.

What else was in the pockets of those shorts besides the crumpled bills? Condoms? Lube?

When they had sex, would it be loud? Would the people of the next room hear the grunts and moans, the forced screams of pleasure that the prostitute would make, or would there only be heavy breathing as the bed would creak and bump against the cabinet with the Bible in rhythmic thrusts?

Would the prostitute be the one on his back with his legs up and straddling his client, the round ass that had been hidden by the shorts getting thoroughly pounded? Would they kiss? Would they cuddle and hold each other after sex or would they immediately part ways? Would the prostitute ask for more money after the sex?

Would the prostitute come back to the bus station near the park? Would Gokudera meet him again?

Somewhere in the midst of all these thoughts, Gokudera got an erection. He was now at his house and so he sprawled on his bed. He quickly stripped himself naked and spat in his hand before starting to jerk off.

Imagined visions flashed through Gokudera's head. The way that the prostitute had bent over, the way his hips had moved when he walked around the car, that perfectly spiked up messy hair of his, the way he had teased with the ends of his shirt as though he was going to rip it off at any moment, the way he had slouched casually against the bus terminal stop and had held the pole in a loose but firm grip.

Gokudera choked out a muffled cry into his pillow. His hands were wet and he was spent. He reached for the tissues that he kept next to his bed and cleaned himself off. Then, before he could think things over or wonder about what had just happened or question his sexuality, he promptly fell asleep.

Deep in grateful oblivion, Gokudera didn't ask himself the most important question: "If I do the meet the prostitute again, what would I do?"

* * *

**Yes, I am conscious that my story has taken a bit of a angsty tone, but I don't even think it's that angsty. **

**I mean, this sort of internal questioning can be hard, but it's a part of adolescence. Interest in sexual things is also part of adolescence; it's a normal process, although I can understand how it may be scary sometimes.**

**For those of you who wonder how Gokudera could possibly be this clueless, his situation is really not unusual. Although I cannot claim to have seen any male prostitutes (only female ones), my process of figuring out my sexuality was a hard and confusing one, much like Gokudera is and will be going through.**

**Review, please.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Wow, I'm really updating like a madman! The thing is, I think that I'm so into this story because Gokudera's perspective is so like mine used to be. It's just too easy to write how he feels when it's all things that I've felt before (or similar) at one point.**

**Hope you like.**

* * *

When Gokudera groggily got up and checked his watch, he swore loudly. He always met with Yamamoto and Tsuna at the end of the street just before midday: it was a time-honored ritual that the three had for the weekends. But because he had woken up late, he was running late!

Almost tripping on the tissues he had used the night before, Gokudera hurried to the bathroom, cleaned himself up and dressed as best as he could in the short time he had available, and started sprinting to the meeting place.

* * *

While Gokudera was making his way to the meeting place, Tsuna was already at the end of the street. Yamamoto arrived next on the scene, waving his hand happily.

"Yo, Tsuna! Sorry I was a bit late. Where's Gokudera?" the baseball player said, grinning his usual bright smile.

"Ah, hello Yamamoto! I don't know where Gokudera is. Didja walk him home as well?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of, but not all the way. I'm sure he got home safe and he just slept in or something. He looked pretty tired when I left him so he must have just crashed when he got to his place," said Yamamoto, stretching his arms and shoulders.

"Yeah… um…" Tsuna paused, and then spoke hesitantly. "I don't know if this is rude or anything to say, but, uh, I still feel a bit embarrassed when I think about what we talked about yesterday."

"What, the thing about Kyoko and Haru and whatever? Don't be embarrassed, Tsuna. It's normal. It's like Gokudera said: we're hormonal teenagers and it's okay, even natural, for us to be like that." Yamamoto slapped his hands on his thighs.

"Well, I guess so," said Tsuna, laughing quietly. "But wow, who knew Gokudera was so, uh…sexual? I mean, I've never known him to be dating anyone, has he? And I don't think he likes anyone, either," said Tsuna, ruffling his already spiky hair in mild bemusement.

"Maybe he likes someone and just hasn't told us. We'll ask him when he comes. And oh, there he is!" Yamamoto excitedly pointed off to the other end of the street.

Gokudera, running and panting, waved a weak hand at them when he arrived at the end of the street where his friends were. "Hey guys. Sorry 'bout keeping you waiting. I slept in late."

"See, I told you Tsuna that nothing had happened to him!" said Yamamoto cheerfully, slinging an arm around Gokudera's shoulders.

When Gokudera had caught his breath, he shrugged off Yamamoto's arm and brushed at his clothes. "So. Where to?"

"Well, Tsuna here was just suggesting that we go over to Kyoko's house!" joked Yamamoto.

"What! I said nothing of the kind!" shrieked Tsuna at the same time that Gokudera complained, "Are we talking about the Sasagawa girl again?"

Tsuna looked at the silver-haired teenager, a little hurt.

"Ah, don't take it that way, Tsuna," sighed the other boy. "I don't really mind about Kyoko. Really. I just feel a bit out of sorts today, that's all. Don't mind me."

Yamamoto, laughing a little to break up the slightly awkward moment, said, "Actually, we were just talking about who you might like, Gokudera."

The silver-haired boy tossed his head to clear his bangs and put his hands in his pockets. "Who I like? I don't like anyone. What are you talking about? Have you been making up stuff?" he turned to Yamamoto suspiciously, putting up his fists in a mock-fighting stance.

"What? No!" giggled Yamamoto, putting his hands up. "We were just wondering, cuz you seem to know so much about girls!"

"I have an older sister, and I'm not blind, and I have a computer. That should about answer it for you. Also, you think I would like any of the airheaded girls at this school? You guys don't know me at all if you think that! Please, I am level A, grades and looks, and I'm not that easy," sniffed Gokudera, tossing his head purely for effect.

"Ooh, someone's a cocky bastard!" yelped Yamamoto, poking him. "You think you're too good for everyone?"

But before Gokudera could banter back with some cutting response, he caught a flash of navy and tan at the corner of his eye and whirled his head around. Was it the man, the prostitute, from the bus terminal stop? But no, it turned out to be a woman in a navy blouse holding an oversized tan bag. Disappointed, he turned his head back around to look in front.

"What was that?" asked Tsuna. "Did you see someone?"

"Nah…," said Gokudera, a little absentmindedly. "I just thought it was something… but it's nothing."

Yamamoto shook his head and poked his absentminded friend back into the present reality. "Wow, you're sure out of it today, Gokudera! What's wrong, didn't you sleep very well?"

"Nah, guys, it's nothing," said Gokudera, forcing a smile and going back to horsing around with Yamamoto. "So where are we going, exactly?"

The other two paused in the middle of the street. "Uhm…," they collectively said, neither of them having any ideas on what to do for the day.

Gokudera rolled his eyes. "Here, if you guys aren't hungry yet, I was thinking about going to the school grounds so that I could practice my archery. You know, the game with Osaka that's coming up?"

Tsuna bit his lip. "But what about Hibari? You know how he gets!" The boy's spiky brown hair waved back and forth as the small boy practically trembled with fear. "He's so violent, and for no good reason!" he squeaked.

"Aww, that's just when Hibari's in one of his cranky moods," said Yamamoto optimistically, as the three of them started walking towards Namimori. "Maybe he'll lighten up on us because it's the weekend and all!"

"Huh, I doubt it," snorted Gokudera, as he scaled the school wall and unlocked the school gates from the inside. "If anything, I bet that he'll act even more whacked-up because we're not supposed to be at school at all on the weekends."

And with that, the boy threw open the gates and let his friends into the Namimori High School grounds.

* * *

The three walked in tentatively, as though waiting for a thunderbolt to strike them all down at the very next step.

"Oh…guys, are you sure that we should be here? What if Hibari really does get more mad at us like Gokudera said?" cried Tsuna, clutching at his hair, as the trio made their way across the sandy field to the storage closet where the sports equipment was kept.

"Don't worry about him, Tsuna," said Gokudera confidently as he pulled his archery equipment out of the storage. "Even if he shows up all pissed at us, I'll let him know that you had nothing to do with it. Don't mind him. He's just a crazy bitch who has a meter long stick up his ass."

"Oh my god, Gokudera!" yelped Yamamoto, "Did you take your super-crazy pills this morning? If he hears you say that, he'll kill us for sure!" But despite the apparent worries about being killed by Hibari, the baseball player still doubled over in loud laughter.

There was scruffling sound from behind them. The three froze.

"What are you three doing here?" said an extremely serious and hostile voice from behind the three friends. The three whirled around to see Hibari, eyes slanted in a definite expression of anger and tonfas held at the ready to enact punishment. Tsuna squeaked high enough to communicate with bats, Gokudera clutched his equipment fiercely, and Yamamoto laughed even harder than ever with a tone of hysteria.

Hibari struck. In a moment, Tsuna and Yamamoto were knocked down on the ground and the violent head of the disciplinary committee had his knee on top of Gokudera's chest and a tonfa pressing down on his throat, making it hard for the archer to breathe.

"And you," said Hibari, staring down at the wheezing teenager that he was crushing, "What did you say about me?"

Gokudera coughed a few times. "Look, Hibari, we just came to practice sports, okay? We didn't come here to steal anything, or to cheat on something, or to fucking blow up your precious school, so calm the fuck down, alright?"

Hibari apparently wasn't satisfied with this answer, because he hauled up his selected victim by the collar and slammed him face-first against the storage room wall, twisting Gokudera's arm behind him in an excruciatingly painful position.

"Ow! Shit, what're you doing that for!" yelled Gokudera. "Will you chill, already?"

Hibari's only response was to twist Gokudera's arm even more harshly. When Gokudera realized that yelling at the increase in pain was futile, he lowered his voice and addressed his attacker from a different angle.

"Hibari, that arm you're twisting?" he huffed, "That's my shooting arm. You break or sprain or damage that arm in any capacity, you lose one of the best archers on Namimori's archery squad. We have an archery competition against Osaka come this Monday. You don't want your oh-so-precious school to lose to Osaka, which is _only_ our _top_ rival school, do you?"

Hibari seemed to hesitate. Or at least he didn't do anything else violent.

Yamamoto jumped in at his chance to intervene on behalf of his friend. "Yeah, Gokudera's right, Hibari! And I'm sorry about losing that baseball game we had yesterday and all, but if you let us practice for a little bit, we'll have a higher chance of winning next time, eh? Come on!"

Hibari stilled and then suddenly let Gokudera down, making the bruised boy slump to the ground. "_Only_ stay in the field and don't go _anywhere else_, got it? And return _all_ equipment to the storage room afterwards." he warned sternly. When Tsuna and Yamamoto vigorously nodded, Hibari left with a final kick at Gokudera.

Groaning, Gokudera got up, Yamamoto running over to his side to support him and keep him from falling over. "Damn that Hibari…" the archer muttered.

"Shh!" said Tsuna, wide-eyed and still wary of Hibari. "He's probably still watching us!"

"You alright, Gokudera? Man, that Hibari came down on you hard!" said Yamamoto.

Gokudera rolled his eyes in the direction that Hibari had gone off in and picked up his archery equipment. "He won't come back. He won't want his school to lose to Osaka, not when Osaka's our biggest rival and all. He'll leave us alone."

Rolling his shoulders and getting into the correct stance, Gokudera carefully but quickly aimed and fired. The arrow hit three inches from the center.

"Wow, that's really good! Let me try it!" whooped Yamamoto, taking up a bow and arrow of his own. The next second, he was clutching his arm and yelling. "Ow, that hurt! The string hit me!"

"There's a correct stance to shoot in, you baseball idiot," said Gokudera, grinning. "It's not as easy as it looks. Also, the string rebound is what the forearm guards are for, genius!"

"Alright, alright, you can be the archery master and I'll just stick to baseball, shall I? Here Tsuna, toss me some balls so I can practice my hitting!"

* * *

An hour later, Gokudera took a short break from his shooting and looked over to where Yamamoto and Tsuna were. Tsuna was inexpertly tossing balls at Yamamoto and squealing every time the baseball player hit one straight on. Yamamoto, while he was his usual smiling self as always, wore a look of concentration whenever Tsuna threw a ball at him. It was a look that was a little frightening in its intensity, but also amazingly beautiful. Yamamoto's muscles moved and flexed wonderfully under his shirt as he swung the bat.

One of the baseballs that Yamamoto hit rolled over to where Gokudera was standing and the archer broke out of his haze. He put down his bow and picked up the ball.

"Hey Yamamoto, hit this, why don't you?" shouted Gokudera as he ran over to where Tsuna was and hurled the baseball in a fairly decent throw.

Yamamoto swung, and with a crack, the ball flew straight and far across the field. Gokudera, not one to let himself be bettered, ran back to his shooting line, took his stance, and shot. The arrow landed almost directly on the center of the target. The three of them all cheered loudly and after exchanging congratulatory slaps on the back all around, put away the equipment, called it a day, and went to find someplace to eat lunch.

* * *

By the time that the three had finished eating lunch, the topic of conversation had steered towards girls yet once again.

"So now we know the kind of girls that Tsuna likes, but what about you, Gokudera?" said Yamamoto, smiling at his two friends in turn.

"Oh, don't start on me again!" grumbled Gokudera. "I'm single and I'm happy being single for the moment, okay? I'll let you know when my status changes!"

Truth was, Gokudera himself had never really thought seriously about girls so he really didn't have a clue what kind he liked. After a moment of internal pondering, he turned to Yamamoto with his head thoughtfully turned to the side.

"Talking about kinds of girls, you never did answer my question yesterday night about who 'your type' is. So spill."

Yamamoto scratched his head a little uncertainly. "Well, truth to tell, I don't rightly know! I haven't really thought about it, I guess, because I've been so busy with school and all. I suppose I like the type who speaks their mind, who doesn't let themselves get pushed around, who has their own opinion. Someone spirited, I guess. Wait, why do you look so surprised, Gokudera?"

Gokudera was secretly relieved that he wasn't the only one who hadn't seriously pondered girls, but didn't show it. "Oh, I dunno. I guess I thought that you'd like the quiet types, sort of like Tsuna here. You know, one of those obedient, never-talk-back types who do whatever you say and act all innocent and stuff."

"Holy hell, Gokudera! Where's the fun in that?" yipped Yamamoto in a high-pitched tone, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

"Well, I dunno!" said Gokudera, feeling a little flustered and running his fingers through his hair. "You're the one who was talking about getting little lucky tokens or whatever, and I just thought that those types of girls were the ones most likely to do things like that!"

"Oh no no no, you got it all wrong!" the baseball player said, ruffling the back of his head. "And don't focus so much on the tokens; that was just an idle thought. Even if someone gives me something for good luck, it would only be nice if I had to really win the good luck charm, you know? Now, forget about me and stop stalling! It's _your _turn now, to tell us _your_ type!"

Gokudera frowned and cocked his head even more to the side in his odd thinking position. "Um... give me a minute. I haven't really…I haven't really thought about it."

Tsuna, who was sporting a mild blush again, said, "Well, we know that you think _looks_ are really important, at least."

Gokudera snorted and rubbed the edges of his shoes on the pavement in embarrassment. "Seriously, how shallow do you guys think I am? Yeah, I guess good-looking would be nice, but you know, people can't control their appearance; people are just born with the body they got. As far as looks go, I think being fit is good, because you _can_ control fitness, ya know…"

Suddenly, the way that the prostitute from the park had moved his arm, the flexing that was visible even in the dusky night, the line of muscle that had shown even he wasn't moving, came into Gokudera's head. He briefly wondered if the prostitute also took women as clients. But as quickly as the image of the prostitute had come into his mind, he shook his head of the image and continued speaking.

"As for personality, that's like, the most important thing. That and intellect. I really couldn't be with anyone stupid. I mean, it'll be sort of like what Yamamoto said. It'll be so boring. Our interests have to coincide, of course. But wait, are we talking casual date or, like, marriage, here?"

Yamamoto, who was grinning at Gokudera's awkward monologue, shrugged and widened his smile. "Either way. Both, then."

"Oh, why didn't you say so before?" said Gokudera, regaining his usual cockiness and wearing a purposefully smarmy smirk. "If it's just a casual date, forget everything else, I just want someone sexy! I mean, it's only for the night, right?"

Yamamoto cracked up with laughter at Gokudera's blasé statement about one-night stands and even Tsuna, who understood that Gokudera was joking, giggled. "Oh, seriously, someone needs to teach you better manners!" Yamamoto chortled before starting a poking match that Tsuna joined in on.

When they quit horsing around in the middle of the street, it was time for Yamamoto to go and help out his father at the sushi restaurant. "Aw man, I gotta go!" Yamamoto exclaimed ruefully. "My dad will be expecting me. You guys can't come with me, can you?" he asked hopefully.

Tsuna shook his head apologetically. "Sorry, but you know how much longer it takes me to do my homework. We'll meet again tomorrow anyways."

Gokudera nodded, affirming what Tsuna said. "And if Tsuna's doing homework, he probably wants me to help him with it so I'll have to go with him. Like Tsuna said, we'll see you tomorrow."

Yamamoto sighed. "Well, alright," he said, before taking off for his father's restaurant.

* * *

The other two started walking the opposite way to Tsuna's house, but while they were walking, Gokudera looked back at the retreating figure of Yamamoto. Even though Yamamoto was wearing a hoodie and a pair of jeans, the silver-haired adolescent couldn't help thinking that something about Yamamoto was like the prostitute at the park. Maybe it was the dark spiky hair or maybe it was the way he walked, but something about the cool, casual, yet asserted way that he moved about and went about his life captivated Gokudera's mind. He was broken out of this rather discomfiting line of thought when Tsuna cleared his throat.

"Uh…Gokudera?" the short brown-haired boy asked softly. "I sort of… want to ask you something."

"Sure," said Gokudera with a small but sincere smile. "Go right ahead. What about?"

Tsuna blushed. "Um…I didn't want to ask this when Yamamoto was around, but I know that you're more comfortable about…about sexual stuff, so I wanted to ask you a few questions."

Gokudera felt a little awkward and proud at the same time that Tsuna was asking him for sexual advice, but he didn't show his emotions and just did his usual shrug and tossed his head to clear his sight. "Okay, I'll do my best, I guess. What do you want to know?"

Tsuna blushed harder. "Well, you know how you were talking about… girls' chests and stuff?"

"Yeah? You mean boobs?"

"Yeah," said Tsuna, a little shakily. "Well, is that, like, important? And, like, what exactly do you do with them to make the girl feel good? I mean, I know I haven't gotten anywhere with Kyoko yet, but still…"

Gokudera was starting to feel a little out of his element. Running his fingers through his hair unnecessarily, he cleared his own throat. He knew, from watching porn on the internet, what guys did with boobs, but he couldn't really imagine how that would feel good.

"Well, you just sort of play around with them, ya know? And suck on them if you feel like it. It doesn't take much to make the girl feel good, I don't think," Gokudera said as honestly as he knew how. From the videos he had seen, it had looked like all the guy needed to do was just touch the girl a little and bone her and she would immediately start moaning or making these little breathy noises.

Tsuna nodded very seriously at Gokudera's words, and Gokudera fervently hoped that he hadn't given Tsuna the wrong impression. Then Tsuna blushed again, a sign that he was going to ask another sexual question.

"And, uh…what about, you know, touching yourself?" he asked shyly.

"Oh, masturbation? Every teenager, or at least every boy, does that," said Gokudera, relaxing a little bit. This was a question that he could answer confidently. "That's completely normal."

"Well, what do you think about when you… you know?"

Gokudera remembered the last night when he gotten hard after seeing the prostitute. He couldn't quite figure it out. He decided he wouldn't tell anyone about it until he had figured it out for himself. He tried to think of an answer for Tsuna.

"I dunno," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I guess everyone thinks about the same sort of things. To be honest, Tsuna, I think I just focus on how good it feels and I don't really think about anything specific. If you like Kyoko, though, it would make sense for you think about her naked and such."

Tsuna blushed terribly, and Gokudera smiled. "You don't have to feel bad for thinking about Kyoko that way," he said as reassuringly as he could. "You like her, right? It just means that you're physically attracted to her as well."

"Yeah well," said Tsuna. "I can't help thinking sometimes how Kyoko won't be too happy if she finds out that I think about her that way. She'll probably be upset if she knew."

Gokudera shrugged his shoulders a little more violently than before and shifted his hands in his pants pockets. "It's not hard to keep that sort of thing secret, Tsuna. You're attracted to her, and that's that. No one's the worse off for it if we just keep it quiet and Kyoko doesn't find out. And she _won't_ find out, don't worry."

"I guess…but Gokudera, have you ever thought about a girl like I think about Kyoko? You know, in the past when maybe you had a little crush or something?"

Gokudera tried to think about a time when he had thought about a girl in a sexual way. He had looked at porn with girls in them and had jerked off while watching them, so he had jerked off to girls, but not to anyone specific. The last night had been directed at someone specific, but he decided that he wasn't going to count that.

"…Nah," he said slowly. "I've never really noticed a specific girl that I liked enough. The right one hasn't come along yet, I guess. You're lucky, Tsuna. I'm sure that you'll be able to get Kyoko before long."

The two were now at Tsuna's house and so they cut off their conversation and went in to do their school homework.

* * *

**Poor Gokudera. There's nothing else for me to say except that I hope that I portrayed his feelings (and that of every other gay male teenager) accurately through my writing.**

**Review, please.**


	4. Chapter 4

**I feel like Gokudera's just getting himself into a deeper and deeper bind, but only in his mind. Well, that's life, and that's reality. **

**It doesn't initially seem like his troubles are much, but seriously, look back at your own life. Haven't you all faced dilemmas in your past that didn't seem to be anything but which crowded up all the space in your head?**

**Hope this is realistic enough to match the petty but all-emcompassing struggles of the real world.**

* * *

While his two friends were doing their school homework, Yamamoto was helping his father at the sushi restaurant. The father-son pair stood side by side, expertly slicing the flesh from the fish bones and cutting it up in the appropriate sizes.

The only sound in the private sector of the kitchen were the sound of clicking knives, chopping noises against the cutting board, and the waiters' shouts from the regular open kitchen space about customer orders that had yet to be carried out. Yamamoto glanced at his hardworking father a couple of times before clearing his throat to speak.

"Uh, dad?" he said, and although he smiled as he always did, he couldn't quite put his heart into it. If his heartbeat had been faster during the baseball game, this was a different kind of nervousness that he was feeling, a kind of uncertain anticipation that made his heartbeat fainter.

"Yeah?" replied the older man, not looking away from the fish. "What's up? You've been awfully quiet, haven't you? You're usually talking my ear off at this time about something or other but you haven't really said much today. Did you have a fight with your friends?"

"What? No! No, I haven't fought with anyone!" said Yamamoto in mild shock at his father's assumption. He laughed a little in his increased nervousness. "Um, but…I was thinking about something, that's all." If Yamamoto hadn't had both his hands full, he would have used one of his hands to scratch the back of his head in agitation. Strange thing was, even though he felt fidgety, he wasn't exactly sure why.

"Well, what about? I'm guessing you weren't thinking about fish, right?" said the father, grinning at his son. "You cut your pieces all crooked!"

"Uh, no, it isn't," said the baseball player absentmindedly as he waved a vague hand towards his poorly-cut sushi job without really seeing it. "Ah, it's silly…nevermind."

The father stopped working and washed his hands. Putting his cleaned hands on his hips, he turned to face his son. "Don't 'nevermind' me. It's clearly something serious if you've been thinking so hard about it all night. Now spill."

At his father's last statement, Yamamoto suddenly remembered how Gokudera had said something very similar when he had asked Yamamoto about the types of girls he liked as the trio of friends had walked along the street. Yes, that was right; the exact words that the silver-haired friend had said were "So spill." Yamamoto looked at his father with some astonishment at how his word choice had been so inadvertently close to his friend's.

"Well, it's just that I was wondering about girls and the type of person to have a relationship with and all that," the boy said very rapidly, feeling a little embarrassed and hoping that his father wouldn't think of him as sappy.

"Were you and your friends talking about that sort of thing today?" asked the astute sushi master as he started preparing a new fish.

"Yeah. Tsuna likes someone so he knows what type of girl he likes, and Gokudera said he didn't really know but he seems to have a vague idea of sorts, but I just kinda made up something on the spot when they asked me. I mean, I hadn't really thought about it too seriously."

"Good!" said the Yamamoto father. "You would have been too young to think about relationships and things like that even just a year ago. You should be focusing on school, not on girls," he said with what sounded like finality.

"Oh…" said Yamamoto, feeling quite a bit put down. "…Right." He clicked his tongue. "I guess it doesn't matter too much, then." Blindly, he started straightening out his haphazardly arranged sushi dish.

"Wait, Takeshi," said the dad, his voice firm. "It's like I said, focusing on school is important, but you're well into puberty now. It's about time for you to be seriously wondering about that sort of thing. There's nothing wrong with that."

The baseball player's spiky hair, which had been pointing at the wall as its owner had hung his head, rose up again. "Is it? I don't know how much puberty has to do with anything. I mean, like, lots of things have been happening recently, but, like, yeah," said the boy awkwardly. "It's just something that happened, that's all."

The father laughed. "Hey, I was your age once too. And believe me, most, if not all the things that have been happening to you these days are bound to be related to puberty. You're well into it now, so you're probably getting a finalized view of the world and what you want, right?"

A mental vision came into the confused boy's head as he listened to his well-meaning but unhelpful parent.

He was in some fancy gothic cathedral, wearing a tuxedo and standing next to a woman who had on an elaborate wedding dress with many gauzy veils. The white fabric of the dress hung loosely off the woman. A breeze from a nearby open window caused the veils and the woman's fluffy light hair to sway and lift up into the dusty air. There was a soft white light that was slowly emanating from the woman's whole body, or perhaps from her slightly transparent dress. Yamamoto could not tell for sure. Or perhaps the light he saw around the woman was a silhouette of sunlight. Yamamoto saw his tuxedoed self squinting at the woman, his head cocked to the side like Gokudera was always doing, as though he was trying to examine the woman. When the woman did not move or respond in any way, he poked her abdomen gingerly at arm's length. The woman did not react, and when he approached closer to try to look at her face, he could not make out anything.

Yamamoto, shaking his head of his disconcerting vision, went to the sink to wash his hands to give himself time to think of an answer.

"Um, actually, I don't think I have a clue," he said, feeling like a little bit of an abnormality. "But, uh, Gokudera said something about how people can't control the body that they were born with, so physically all he wants is good fitness and such. And I thought that maybe that was alright."

The father nodded his head. "Gokudera seems to be a very mature boy. He offered to help wipe tables the last time he was over."

"He's alright," Yamamoto agreed. "But… I can't really tell what he's thinking most of the time. I mean, he's cool and all, and he doesn't put a lot of stock on superficial things, but he does joke around and sometimes it's just hard to tell, ya know?"

The baseball player felt uncomfortable, as though he had just given away a secret or had accidentally betrayed his friend. 'What are you shooting off your mouth for?' he internally asked, frustrated with himself. 'Shut up now if you don't know what you're talking about!' he thought with a hint of anger.

"Well, what does he joke about then? You mean he objectifies girls?"

"No, not exactly," replied Yamamoto, determined to quickly bring this conversation to a close. He was beginning to feel stuffy, and not just because of the warm quarters of the kitchen. "No, he doesn't do that, but he's just not like the most gentlemanly guy around either. It's nothing; he'll probably grow out of it. He's just trying to act cooler than he is, that's what."

"Boys of your age always try to act cooler than they actually are," said the father with a knowing smile. "Like you say, we grow out of it. You're actually one of the more level-headed boys, in my opinion. You must take after me!" he said proudly, lifting his chin.

Yamamoto laughed politely and started preparing a new fish. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father bending over the fish that he was cutting.

His father' jawline was fairly angled and sharp, made to look even sharper with the five o' clock shadow that he was now sporting. As Yamamoto wiped his shining forehead with the back of his hand, he thought of his friends' jawlines. Tsuna had nothing much to speak of. Yamamoto wasn't even sure if Tsuna shaved. Gokudera had a pretty angled facial structure, but Yamamoto hadn't noticed him with stubble so he couldn't compare his friend to his dad.

Next time, sometime when he met Gokudera in the evening, he would look to see how Gokudera's five o' clock shadow was. Yamamoto rubbed his own chin thoughtfully. His own chin was rough with stubble. If he kissed a girl at nighttime, wouldn't his chin rasp against the girl's smooth face? Oh well, he would reconsider it later when he actually got himself a girlfriend.

* * *

Tsuna and Gokudera were finishing up their study session at Tsuna's place. The two had moved the low coffee table from the living room into Tsuna's bedroom and had been doing their homework on the limited surface.

"Well, I guess we should call it a day, eh?" said Gokudera, pushing the coffee table away with his foot and lying down on the floor of Tsuna's bedroom. "We can't do all the homework or we'll have nothing to do when we meet Yamamoto tomorrow when he does _his_ homework."

"Yeah. We're almost three quarters done, I think," said Tsuna, slumping up against a wall. "I'm getting tired of using my brain anyways. I need a break."

"Alright, you go do that," said the silver-haired boy, who had now sat up. "I should be going. Your mom's probably making dinner about now and I don't want to intrude." The boy started packing up his things.

"You can eat dinner with us," said Tsuna, getting up when his friend did. "You know you're always welcome to stay here. There's always extra food and my mom won't mind."

"Thanks, but I should be going," repeated the other boy. "I slept really late yesterday night so I sort of want to sleep a bit earlier today," he partially lied.

"If you're sure, then. Bye!" called Tsuna after Gokudera's retreating form. Gokudera waved a hand without looking back as he went down the street.

* * *

Without a second thought or reconsideration, Gokudera headed for the park swings. He sat down on the same swing as he had used the night before and stared at the bus stop.

Before, the bus stop sign had been nothing but a metal pole with a bus symbol on the top and the waiting benches had been nothing but cheap plastic seats provided by the government public transportation system.

Now, there was something about the entire structure and existence of the bus terminal that had a near irresistible pull. It was where the prostitute had been; it was where he had seen the mysterious young man with the dark perfectly mussed-hair for the first time.

The sign post was what the dark-haired young man had held in his hand, swinging his body back and forth from it at arm's length as though he was dealing with a stripper pole. The bench was where the man had sat, kicking his legs restlessly as he had waited not for a bus, but for a client to come along.

The night was far younger than it had been the last night, so Gokudera did not expect the prostitute to be at the bus terminal yet, but still he sat on the swing and glanced at the terminal on regular intervals.

The internally distraught teenager felt foolish and childish and completely out of his element. He had no money, so even if the prostitute did appear, he could not approach him. Besides, there was a chance that even if he did approach the man with money, the messy-haired man would demand for more than he was able or willing to pay. Or maybe the man would only smile at him condescendingly and turn him away with one glance at his obvious youth. Gokudera was not sure, even if he had all the money in the world, whether he would be able to summon up the courage and sheer madness that was required of him to go near the man in the first place.

He felt that for him to attempt such a reckless and unfamiliar act, he would have to act on nothing but impulse on his front and a flimsy wish tucked away behind his back. Although he desperately wanted to see the prostitute again, it was more of a desire just to catch another glimpse than to establish direct connection, and he somehow also hoped that the prostitute would never show up again so that he wouldn't have face the dilemma of deciding what to do about it if or when the time came.

The first of the park smokers started arriving around the playground. Taking this as a cue that the night had now descended enough that the prostitute could turn up again at any moment, Gokudera got up jerkily, making his swing creak with disturbingly loud squeal of rusty metal as he pushed away from it.

He hurried away as fast as he could, pulling his sweatshirt hood over his head to resist the temptation of looking back.

* * *

**As I said before, I've never seen a male prostitute (or at least I've never seen one with the knowledge that I was looking at one) but I have looked at female prostitutes and wanted to go up to them and ask them a couple of things about what they do.**

**I've never felt the desire to use a prostitute, and neither has or does Gokudera. He just wants... something. Even I don't know what exactly he wants, but it's a deep, strong desire. What do you suppose it is?**

**Review, please.**


	5. Chapter 5

**This chapter is a bit sexual.**

**But don't worry: I never write smut. Nothing in this story is meant to be sexy or arousing in any way. Even though a lot of what is in this chapter seems overtly sexual or just plain disturbing, it's what most every male teenager goes through and the nastier stuff actually does happen in some of the worse parts of a ghetto.**

**It's just the hard facts of life.**

* * *

Tsuna laid down on his bed, flat on his back, daydreaming about Kyoko.

He liked the way that her brown hair, which just came down to her shoulders, draped around her smiling face. Her lips, while it was true that they were not that full or pouty compared to the other girls,' were still pretty and looked perfectly kissable. Her eyes never had a lot of mascara used on them and she didn't wear fake eyelashes so her eyes looked natural and real and easy to look into. Unlike some others, Kyoko didn't wear skirts much anymore because the weather was getting cold, but when she did wear a skirt, it showed off her small and cute ass.

Whenever Tsuna saw Kyoko wearing a slightly shorter skirt than normal, he wanted to press her close to him and grab her ass.

'She's really just too cute,' Tsuna thought, staring up at his bedroom ceiling with his hands supporting his brown head. 'Great personality, too. She's nice to everyone even if they're not that nice to her, but she's no pushover either. I saw her that one time when one of the senior football players was messing up this kid, freshman, I think, and she really let him have it! She actually looked pretty hot when she was mad.'

As a ray of sunlight caught the metal handle of his bedroom door, a glint of silver reminded him of Gokudera. 'Maybe Gokudera's right that Kyoko doesn't have the biggest boobs in the world, but she's no pancake either. She's just skinny, that's all. I mean, only porn stars have big breasts while being skinny at the same time, and that's just because they had boob jobs done, everybody knows that.'

Tsuna was getting a little hot and bothered thinking about Kyoko, but he didn't dare touch himself. His door wasn't locked and he felt too lazy at the moment to get up and lock it; his mother had an alarming habit of barging into his room without any warning no matter how many times he told her not to; and dinner would be ready at any moment anyways.

'But it sure is weird how Gokudera seems to know so much about girls, physically at least, but doesn't have interest in them on the personal level. I mean, after being friends with him straight through middle school and almost all the way through high school, I know that he's a little out of it sometimes, but still.'

Tsuna shifted positions on the bed when his mom called to tell him that dinner was almost ready. He kept on wondering about his shoulder-shrugging, head-tossing friend.

'He's not popular on the jock level, and he's thought of as a bit of a nerd because he's smart and takes Honors classes, but he also has a slight reputation for being rebellious and the other kids seem to like him okay. And hell, even though I'm a guy myself, I know that he's pretty up there on the good-looks standard! Even if he's not that into anyone, surely he would want to just try it out with some halfway decent girl?'

"Tsuna, dinner's ready! Set the table, will you?" called his mother, her voice sounding just a tad bit impatient.

'Ah well, let him do what he wants. He said it himself that he's happy being single,' concluded Tsuna as he quickly went to join his mother at the kitchen table before she got annoyed at him.

* * *

Now that Gokudera had left his usual nightly residence at the park playground swings, he wasn't sure where to go.

Although it was unlikely that there would be many sketchy or violent people in the streets in this part of town, and though he was so internally confused that he really couldn't give a damn even if there were a lot of drugged crazies out, he didn't want to just stand around in the streets or alleyways.

If he was at the park, even if he wasn't there to do anything in particular, he would at least appear to be there to swing at the playground or he would look like he was there to smoke, but if he just standing around on the streets, he would…

It suddenly struck Gokudera that if he just stood around on the streets, he would look like a prostitute.

He froze dead. The silver-haired boy swallowed hard. He glanced around him to see if there was anyone in the near vicinity.

Feeling terribly torn and stuck in a bind and not knowing why, Gokudera trudged to the only other place that he knew of where he could have at least some quality time by himself: his room.

Fervently hoping that he wouldn't run across anyone passed out in the hallway, Gokudera entered the tenement apartment building where he lived. He walked up a few flight of stairs to his floor, unlocked the front door of his apartment, and went in.

Gokudera hated to be in his apartment. His worn down place had been paid for by his father from Italy, who had only been too glad to see his bastard son away from his life. His father was a small businessman living in a highly gossipy neighborhood, and when Gokudera, sick and tired of always being treated like the odd one out, had asked to go to Japan, the man had only been too glad to send him overseas and as far away from his "normal," "wholesome" parody and sham of a life as he could.

So here he was, stuck in this shitty environment without barely enough funds coming in every month to support himself.

Because the apartment was so old and there was always a funny smell of drugs and bad cooking coming from the other apartments, Gokudera always kept the window in the living room open for fresh air. His apartment was quite breezy and chilly as a result. The living room was sparse, with hardly any furniture, and he hated to be in it because it always made him feel so alone and abandoned. He rushed to his bedroom and locked the door behind him with practiced movements as soon as he got safely in.

The walls making up the separate apartments in the building were very thin and there was almost no sound-proofing of any capacity. Some squeals and heavy breathing that could only be described as slutty could be heard from the next apartment. From the sounds of it, it appeared that either the man living to the right of him had picked up some strange broad or the woman living to the left of him had gotten herself a little more high than usual with a boy-toy.

He crawled up next to his mattress, on the side of the room that was furthest from the noise, and swept all his bed sheets off his bed and onto his head to muffle the sounds. The emotionally lost boy hugged his pillow. His mind was completely crowded with thoughts and feelings that he didn't know what to do with. He wished that he was still at the age when he could scream into the sheets and feel better for it.

After unsuccessfully trying to toss his head to clear his dark bangs from his dark eyes, Gokudera pulled his bangs away from his face and held his pillow a little more firmly to his chest. He jigged his leg rapidly up and down in a clear sign of insecurity.

He couldn't understand why he was so hung up about the prostitute. It seemed that every chance he got, every time his mind had a bit of free space, thoughts and images of the male hustler came into his mind. He had never been so taken with one person before.

The conflicted adolescent didn't think that there was anything wrong with prostitution in particular; that much was clear. He supposed that sex-for-sale was just another type of service-for-money and it seemed to him to be an honest enough transaction.

But whatever he thought of the business of prostitution in itself, that didn't explain why he couldn't stop thinking about the hustler.

A particularly loud shriek from the next apartment interrupted his thoughts. From hearing the voice, it definitely seemed that it was the woman on the left-side apartment who had brought over some random stranger to play around with and get off on.

Ripping the sheets off his head, Gokudera got up and glared his fiercest in the direction of the noise. He had asked the woman time and time again to try to keep down the noise, but the woman still insisted on screaming loud enough to bring the pigeons down off the electrical lines outside. Didn't she know that practically everybody in the whole blasted building could hear her, know that she was getting down to the nasty, and that there were minors and small children living in the building?

Gokudera kicked the wall as hard as he could on the spot where he supposed his woman's head would be. The unexpectedly loud volume of his own kick startled him almost as much it did the woman in the next apartment, who yelped in a high tone and then started giggling manically. Cussing as well as he knew how, Gokudera went to his kitchen to get something to eat for dinner.

When he got to his kitchen, however, there was nothing either in the small fridge he owned or the kitchen cabinets except a half-empty bottle of water. Cussing again, Gokudera picked up his wallet from the floor of his bedroom and went out to the nearest convenience store to get himself a styrofoam bowl of instant noodles for his dinner.

* * *

After he had purchased the noodles and had prepared it with hot water, Gokudera stepped out of the convenience store and made his way back to his apartment, eating as he walked.

When he was walking along the hallway on his floor to enter his apartment, the woman from next door stumbled out of the front door of her apartment, closely followed by a male stranger. They tripped, both of them half-naked, out into the hallway in front of Gokudera's door, blocking his way.

Gokudera looked at them with a measure of surprise but kept on eating his shitty dinner as he stood although his tongue seemed to lose its ability to taste at the distasteful and disgraceful sight that was so unfortunately right in front of him.

Although Gokudera's first instinct was to yell at the pair to get the hell out of his way so that he could get into his apartment, he knew from bad experience that yelling at them often only made the drunkards or stoners react violently. If he yelled, they would most likely refuse to move from his doorway and, worst case scenario, have sex against his apartment door right in front of him. He decided that his best move would be to try to lure them away from his doorway and make a dash into his apartment when they were sufficiently distracted.

The woman was clearly still drunk or stoned out of her mind. She was wearing a pair of lacy panties and a tight shirt, and though her shirt was the right way on, it was ripped from the neck so that one of her breasts showed. The shirt had probably been ripped by the male stranger that was trying to finger the woman even out in a public space, the floor hallway.

At the disturbing sight, a fury – and, although the rocker boy refused to admit it, a deep misery – rose from him like the steam rising from his cooling noodles. He tried to bend his head lower towards the Styrofoam bowl so he wouldn't have to look at them as he waited for them to get out of his doorway so that he could go into his apartment. He stayed as quiet as he could and tried to be discreet.

The woman, however, instead of moving away, only stumbled closer to him, apparantly unable to stand up straight or to keep still in one place. She was swaying all over the hallway. The high or drunk woman waved a hand at Gokudera haphazardly, pointing at a place somewhere a good meter away from where the silver-haired teenager actually was.

"Oh, there's no more booze! There's no more happy-juice," she giggled as though she thought that she had said something brilliantly witty. "Do you have any booze? Can I have some? I'll love you if you give me some!"

Gokudera edged away from her, backing away slowly down the hallway. Maybe the woman would follow him down the hallway and move away from his doorway so that he could make a quick run for his apartment.

"You can drink my happy-juice, baby," said the stranger, almost making Gokudera gag, as he continued trying to touch the woman in inappropriate ways in the hallway. Then the stranger, who was also either high or drunk out of his mind, lurched a couple of unsteady steps down the hallway towards the silver-haired teenager.

"Who's that, baby?" murmured the stoned stranger to the woman in what he probably thought was with an arousing tone. "Do you need me to get rid of him?"

Gokudera rolled his eyes and ignored the splinter of hurt that he felt at what the stranger had said. It seemed that everyone in his life, from his father to even the random fuck-buddies of his neighbors wanted him to go away. He poked at his noodles with his plastic fork, shifted his feet, and shrugged his shoulders, impatiently waiting for them to step aside from his doorway already.

"Oh, that's just…uh, that's just my neighbor," slurred the slutty woman. "I forgot his name, but whatever, it doesn't matter. Hi, neighbor! This is…this is…uh, what was your name again?" the woman asked breathily of the stranger, pressing her chest, one breast still hanging outside her shirt, onto the unfamiliar man.

"It's not important. He won't be an annoying brat and interrupt us, will he? Cuz, uh," the stranger grabbed the woman by the waist and put one hand down into her panties. "We'll, uh, be having some more _fun_ and if he's going to be knocking on our door and ruining the mood, I'll kick his ass for you."

Gokudera felt like screaming. "You're the one being an "annoying brat," you fucking _asshole_!" he wanted to yell. "Stop trying to act like such a macho macho _dick_ and get the _hell_ out of my doorway because you're not fucking fooling anyone!" Frustrated and tired almost beyond words, Gokudera wanted to yell and scream and just generally throw a fit, but he stayed quiet, although he couldn't control how his shoulders had started shaking on their own.

"Nah, he knows to leave us alone," said the woman, giggling again. "C'mon, if we can't get any more booze, we'll go back to my apartment."

With that, the two stumbled back off into the woman's apartment. Gokudera ran into his apartment and slammed the door behind him as soon as they were out of his doorway, locking every lock that he had on the front door when he had gotten in. He wanted to throw his bowl of noodles to the opposite side of his apartment and maybe throw up, but he knew that neither action would make his place any more habitable so he did nothing. When he had overcome his nausea, he ran across the living room into his bedroom.

Leaning against the far side of the room and piling up the bed sheets on top of his head again to stop out his ears, Gokudera snatched what sleep he could.

* * *

Yamamoto was sleeping comfortably in his bed. He was dreaming.

In his dream, someone was touching him, caressing him, kissing him. It was dark in his dream and he couldn't make out who it was that was touching his body so wonderfully, but it felt amazingly good and so Yamamoto just let himself focus on the sensations. Whoever or whatever was touching him was all made up of hands and mouths.

He felt like he was floating on a grey cloud or like he was effortlessly hovering in a background of dark fog. He was being touched, dealt with, pleasured, in an expert manner, in ways that he could not imagine any physical being ever being able of doing, and he was breathing faster and harder and quicker with every second.

Then his breath choked and he woke up.

The morning sun was shining through a crack in the window blinders and the crack of bright light was shining almost directly on his face. He shook his head and caught his breath. His chest was still heaving. He hadn't had a wet dream like that in a while.

Discarding his soiled boxers, Yamamoto checked the time on the bathroom clock and jumped straight in the shower.

* * *

**There's nothing more for me to say.**

**Review, please.**


	6. Chapter 6

**As a teenage boy myself, I know adolescence is messed up. Puberty brings with it a lot of deep desires that are not always clear.**

**I just want to clarify one thing: not of the three main characters in this story has a finalized idea of what they want, notwithstanding any daydreams, night-dreams, conscious thoughts, or subconscious thoughts. There is no direct answer to their questions, wants, and needs.**

**But hell, it's impossible to not at least try to find the answer, isn't it?**

* * *

Gokudera was the first one at the meeting place at the end of the street. While waiting for his friends, he shrugged and stretched his shoulders in a futile attempt to alleviate the stiffness he felt after sleeping in such an awfully cramped position.

All of a sudden, he felt a tap on his shoulder. When he whirled around, making his bangs flick to the wrong side of his face, he saw Yamamoto, hair still wet from his morning shower, standing in front of him with a wide grin.

"Hey, look who's here!" said the baseball-player. "You're here bright and early today! Didja get up early?"

"Ah…yeah. There's some construction thing going on nearby my place and the noises woke me up," Gokudera said, making up an unnecessary excuse and tossing his head to get his hair, and hopefully also his mind, right. "Seriously, can they not start at, like, the crack of dawn?"

Gokudera tried to muster up a convincing slightly-annoyed tone to match his lie. In truth, he had gotten up when the stranger who had been fucking his neighbor had fled from the apartment building while clutching his sleazy head, bumping against every square surface of wall in the hallway, and groaning about his hangover, but he wasn't about to admit that to his friend.

Tossing his head again, Gokudera tried to shake the unwanted memory from his mind.

"Uh, so!," the silver-haired teenager said, snapping back to the present, "What went down yesterday night for you? Tsuna and I got almost completely done with our homework but I suppose you haven't, right?"

"No, unfortunately. You know how it goes. My dad's restaurant and all," said Yamamoto, shaking his head in the direction of the sun to dry his hair. "You really got most of your homework done? I mean, I know you take a lot of advanced classes and stuff."

"I didn't have much to start with. There's a test or a quiz tomorrow, but they're in the last two class periods and I'll be missing half the day anyway because of the archery competition against Osaka."

"What? But I thought the competition was home!" exclaimed the baseball player, looking at his friend in surprise.

"It is, but it starts early because the Osaka people have to get back by a certain time for a school assembly or something. I dunno."

Yamamoto nodded. His short black hair, which was rapidly drying, was now standing up from his head in all directions. "You worried? I mean, it's Osaka again. It's your first time competing against them this year, right? They're really good. I don't know how good their archery is, but if it's anything like their baseball then it'll be tough."

It was Gokudera's turn to nod grimly. "They were good last year. Damn good. They had this one kid – well, actually, I think he was older than me so not exactly a kid – who hit the bull's eye almost every time. It was fucking crazy. It couldn't have been all skill; that type of skill is on a level that world champions struggle to get to. Probably was a combination of luck and skill, but still. Damn!"

"Well, if he was older than you, maybe he was a senior and graduated!" said Yamamoto happily. "And if not, well, let him be a world champion if he wants. It's okay!"

Gokudera, although he was still internally troubled by his living-quarters situation, couldn't help but cracking a smile at Yamamoto's near ridiculous level of optimism. Yamamoto widened his own smile in cheeriness at having gotten his moody friend to grin. He hadn't purposely done anything with that specific objective in mind, but seeing a smile on his rocker-style friend's face made him feel oddly satisfied. He clapped Gokudera on the shoulder.

"But if it worries you, we can go to the school to practice again. You want to?"

"Nah, it's okay. Tsuna won't want to anyway, I bet. Where is he?"

"Well, we're both here early. He'll show." Yamamoto was already a few centimeters taller than Gokudera, but he got up on his toes to look down the street. "Hey, I don't see him, but I think I see Ken and Chikusa. Should I call them over?"

Gokudera shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He wasn't keen on including any other people in what he saw as _his_ group, but Yamamoto looked excited to say hi to their former school classmates. "Whatever you want to do."

"Ken! Chikusa! Hey!" yelled Yamamoto without any further ado, waving his arms in a far more hyperactive way than Gokudera thought was strictly fitting for the situation. The other two boys down the street ran up.

"Hey Yamamoto, Gokudera," they said. "Whatcha doing?"

Just as Gokudera was about to tell them that they were waiting for Tsuna to show, Tsuna showed up with a slight look of surprise at the new temporary additions to their group. "Hi guys," he said softly, looking at all of them in turn.

Ken, who had a great affinity for fast food, pointed at the part of the street that had all the fast food places. "Want to get a bite to eat? I'm starved!"

Like before, Gokudera didn't feel so keen on doing anything with either Ken or Chikusa, neither of whom he had been or was very familiar with, but he shrugged as he always did when he had no idea how else to respond. Taking the shrug as an affirmative, Ken started off down the road, leaving the other four no choice but to mutely follow.

* * *

Gokudera looked up at the sign of picture-label arrangements of fast food as he stood last in line behind his friends and brief acquaintances. Each option that his dark eyes passed over looked more unhealthy and unappealing than the last.

Even after the whole morning, Gokudera's stomach was still queasy with the memory of the repulsive sexcapade that he had suffered through the last night. He was quite sure that eating anything fried in day-old – or perhaps even week-old – grease wasn't about to make his insides settle down, particularly when he was already slightly off ease with the other two classmates who had barged, invited by Yamamoto or not, into his life.

There was now only Tsuna in front of him in the waiting line. He had to decide fast. Tsuna, paying for his food, stepped aside so that nothing was between Gokudera and the obnoxiously bright red and yellow ordering counter.

Holding his long bangs out of his eyes with his hand as he looked up at the food list, Gokudera looked for the first thing that wouldn't make him feel sick in his current weak-stomached state. To his relief, one of the side dishes included a Caesar salad, which he ordered.

Moments later, he was making his way to the cramped round table that his school mates had taken up. When he sat down with his salad, Ken made an expression that suggested that he was mentally frowning at it.

"What'd you get that faggy salad for?" the lanky boy asked through a mouthful of hamburger. "Who even eats those anyways?"

Gokudera didn't lift his chin up to look at Ken, but he did quickly glance upward with his eyes. He thought about replying with a "Fuck you, I do," but he wasn't close enough to Ken to joke around with an edge. Besides, he almost couldn't be bothered to even respond. He shrugged and ripped open the covering off his plastic fork.

Perhaps he had shrugged a little more roughly than usual, because Yamamoto laughed as he always did when he suspected or sensed that things were about to get awkward. "Well, maybe he wants to keep fit for tomorrow's competition," he said, playfully jostling Gokudera with his right elbow. "He competes against Osaka not even twenty-four hours from now, you know," he said, with a tone that sounded like he was taking personal pride from his friend's achievements. "And they're tough so he needs as many things in his favor as he can get to make up for his lousy shooting!"

Relaxing a little at hearing his friend's mannerisms and familiar teasing, the salad-eating teenager threw a bit of non-salad dressing covered carrot at Yamamoto with a flick of his middle finger. "Ah fuck you," he said, grinning a little. "You saw me shoot yesterday! You're just jealous, that's what you are." Yamamoto grinned in return.

Chikusa washed down a bite of burger with a slurp of his soda. "Shoot? Oh, that's right, you do archery, don't you?"

"Mhm. Yeah," said Gokudera

"It's alright, I guess, but not much of a spectator sport, though, is it?

"Well, not really," said Tsuna, joining the table's conversation. "I thought it was a bit boring at first, and I still sort of do – sorry Gokudera – but really, doesn't every game get a little boring when you know all the regulations and the standards and things like that?"

Chikusa shook his head like it was obvious. "Not really. There's a reason why FIFA football and college basketball and major league baseball and things like that are so popular. Even people who don't generally watch sports will watch the World Cup. It's not like anybody in this world doesn't know the rules of soccer. How hard is it to figure out? Just kick a ball into a net and done!"

"Yeah well," said Gokudera, getting up his mettle, "As I'm the one who's doing the sport, I won't be watching myself. And, if you ask me, it's debatable how watchable baseball is. I mean, think about it. A guy hits a ball and then runs around a field. That's the whole game! It's a game to try to run around in circles!"

"Diamonds! It's a baseball _diamond_, not a circle!," said the resident baseball player at the table, forming his fingers into a rough approximation of a diamond. "And it _is_ watchable! You saw for yourself the crowd that was watching the game. _You_ were there too! So hah!," he concluded in a delightfully victorious manner.

"Technicalities, technicalities," said the archer, shrugging and waving a dismissive hand in the limited space he had available as he teased right back. "And also, I'm pretty sure most of the crowd was there to watch _you_, not the game itself. You think that _I_ would have any real interest in that stupid sport of yours?"

"I didn't see much of that game actually. How'd it go, by the way?" asked Ken.

Tsuna giggled. "We lost in, like, record time! He struck out; almost everyone did. And disgraced himself in front of probably all the girls at this school. They looked so disappointed; it was hilarious, let me tell you!"

Ken cracked a smile. "Did he? A lot of girls come to watch him, don't they? Maybe I should join the sport; I need to get a girl."

Rolling his eyes, Gokudera said, "Are we talking about girls again? I swear that we've talked about nothing else these days!" The conversation topic on girls had caused him to flashback on a mental picture of his slut of a neighbor, one breast still vulgarly hanging out her shirt, and made him feel uncomfortable although the impact of the image had decreased marginally.

"What are you talking about?" said Ken. "We only just started talking about girls." He slapped Gokudera on the shoulder with his bony hand in a poor imitation of the way Yamamoto sometimes bumped shoulders to express camaraderie. "You gay or something?" He grinned to show that he didn't mean it seriously.

"It's just that it's annoying, that's all," said Gokudera, shaking his bangs over his face in a defensive move. "Everyone keeps telling me to get a girl or something."

"Well, no one was telling you to do anything, so chill," said Ken, leaning back easily on his seat. "I was saying that_ I_ need to get a girl, not that you do."

"If anyone needs to get a girl, it's me," said Chikusa morosely, looking down at the crumbs on the oily paper wrapping that his burger had come in. "I've never had a girlfriend."

"Neither have I," put in Tsuna, a little sadly, but with a glint of hope that was no doubt born of his recent crush on Kyoko.

"It's nothing to feel bad about," Yamamoto reassured them, apparently unaware that he was the one at the table with the least to complain about on terms of his popularity among girls. "No one at this table has had a real girlfriend, including me."

"No, you had a girl back in middle school, didn't you?" questioned Chikusa.

"Oh, middle school. I don't even remember her name." Yamamoto scratched his head. "Anyways, it wasn't anything worth mentioning. You can't even count that sort of stuff when all we did just walk each other home after school." The boy shook his head as though casting out cluttered memories that were only taking up space in his skull.

The black-haired boy turned to the right of him and addressed Gokudera with a friendly curiosity, an affectionate smile naturally setting up on his slightly wind-burned face. "What about you? Did you date anyone back in your old town before you transferred here?"

Gokudera, who had been silently sulking a little in a disquieted ambience, was caught a little off guard. He tossed his head and blinked his now cleared eyes.

For some reason, even though Yamamoto frequently and regularly gave him much of his time of day, it felt better than usual that he was being addressed by the baseball player. It felt something like an ego-boost, like proof that Yamamoto cared more about what he thought than he did for the others. The silver-haired archer's brief mood-swing downwards crept back up with a warm glow upon receiving the raven boy's attention.

"Ah, you know how I am," said Gokudera, putting a false carelessness into his voice to mask the unexplainable elation he felt. "I have such a shit memory that even if anything had happened I don't remember it. I think I had a couple of flings like you, but like you said, you can't count that sort of kid stuff," he said, almost proud to be common to his friend.

In truth, Gokudera did have a hazy memory of a night in the distant past in which some girl had come onto him when he was in Italy, but it was a memory that he refused to accept and which he rejected. So he _had_ spoken truth, but he had spoken his version of the truth; the truth that he wanted to believe; _his_ truth. After all, it would have impossible for him to avoid sexual encounters altogether in the deranged household that he had grown up in, with the womanizing father that he had, but all things considered, and in his own mind, he was clear of all blame.

"Flings? Spoken like a guy who's actually gotten some! Way to go, man!" Ken exclaimed, holding up his hand to Gokudera for a high-five. "I always thought that you might have actually gotten somewhere!"

Tsuna flushed, unused to talking about sex with people outside of his fixed group, but gently tittered; Yamamoto smiled the safe smile that he used when he didn't exactly know where things were going; Chikusa slurped his soda in a way that suggested slight envy. Gokudera briefly touched the palm of his hand to Ken's to be polite, bemused as to how Ken had come to this particular conclusion.

"What, huh?" Gokudera looked at Tsuna in a wordless appeal for a translation. "Why would you think that?" Did people who had had sex give off a certain vibe that he was perhaps letting off? The messy-haired boy was so confused that he very well near sniffed his armpit to find out if he was letting off some signature pheromone.

Ken laughed. "You just seem the type to mess around but not kiss-and-tell, ya know?"

Gokudera didn't, in fact, know what Ken was talking about so he mutely shook his head. Him? Messing around? By all intents and purposes, he was a self-described loner who stuck with the minimal number of people he knew! "No, I think you definitely got the wrong idea. I haven't done anything with anyone, hardly."

His words only caused Ken to laugh harder. "Yeah. _Hardly_."

Gokudera decided to just let things be and give up. He shrugged and went back to eating his salad. Making an effort to change the subject, he shifted the focus of conversation to someone else. "Speak for yourself. You once had it going with Chrome, didn't you? Over last last summer or something, right?"

"Oh, that," said Ken, "That was just a thing. I only just barely got to second base and then it ended. Whatever," he said, trying to act cool.

Yamamoto, who had been oddly quiet for the past couple of minutes, let out a quick snort of a laugh. "Baseball metaphors, I love it!," he said, making everybody at the table snicker at his enthusiasm whenever his sport was mentioned.

Chewing on a French-fry, Chikusa shifted in his seat to face the baseball player. "If your last girl was in early middle school, why haven't you dated since, then? It's not like you couldn't. What, don't like anyone? Or, I dunno, too hard to choose just one?"

For the life of him, Gokudera didn't know why it was always the boys who had the least possibility of getting anyone to date them that were always the most cocky and disparaging towards girls, talking about them like they were merchandise. Sure, he was guilty of the same crime of objectifying girls sometimes, but he never meant it seriously and he was always only joking. Yamamoto, by the look on his face, was thinking along the same lines as him in reaction to Chikusa's last comment.

"Wow, I think I know how you feel Gokudera," he said, laughing a little. "People keep on hounding me on girls, too! I keep telling everyone that I just don't really think about it much." He addressed the group. "Like, it's not my first priority, you know?"

"Yeah, well, you can afford to be casual about it. Everybody knows you got baseball on the mind." Ken stood up to put his tray away and the rest of the table followed. "But we're just telling you man, you could be getting some."

Yamamoto glanced at Gokudera and shrugged, grinning right after he purposely stole Gokudera's character move. Gokudera grinned, hit him on the shoulder, and shrugged back.

Yamamoto looked at his watch. "Wowzer, I gotta be going! I haven't done any of my homework yet and I have a lot this weekend."

"Or rather what's left of it," added Tsuna. "See ya Ken, Chikusa, we'll be seeing you."

"Sure," the other two replied, and the two groupies of friends parted ways.

* * *

"I don't know why we get this sort of useless shit as homework," complained Gokudera, doing a worksheet for his history class. "All we're doing is copying down the textbook."

Yamamoto scratched his cheek with his pencil tip. "Well, they do say that you remember things better if you write them down, but yeah, I see your point. It does seem sort of pointless."

"You see my point that it's pointless? Wow, you sure do have a way with words."

"Ah, my brain's fried from doing homework," said Yamamoto, leaning back and clutching his short hair. "History's really boring, I think. I mean, I'm not going to be a historian or anything like that so I don't actually have to know any of this stuff."

"Well, I'm complaining about this worksheet cuz I really don't think it's helpful, but I like the subject of history in and of itself." Gokudera bit his lip a little. "I want to be a lawyer, and you need to know stuff like this and court cases if you want to go into law. Plus, history is culture and I figure that it's good being cultured, knowing from where you come from and all that."

"There's a reason why you're an honors student after all," said Yamamoto, sighing. "I don't know how you do it, but you actually like studying, I guess."

Tsuna came back from the bathroom and stepped into the Yamamoto living room space. "Hey guys, I'm thinking of going to the convenience store around back and getting something. You guys want anything?"

"Nah, we're good. You go," said Yamamoto, Gokudera nodding his head in agreement.

"Right then," said Tsuna, shoving on his shoes and going out. Gokudera turned back to Yamamoto.

"Like I was saying, there's a difference between the subject and the examinations that come with the subject. I _don't_ like examinations but there's nothing wrong with most of my classes besides that. Besides science. Science makes me want to fucking strangle kittens."

Yamamoto laughed. The sound rang around the living room. "Whoa! I don't know about strangling kittens, but I'm no hot shot at science. Or in really any of my subjects. I'll probably go to college on some baseball scholarship while you get a full-tuition merit scholarship or something!"

"Yeah, well, I have to get a scholarship anyway. Money ain't exactly falling from the sky where I live."

Yamamoto started scribbling on his worksheet, and although his face was turned downwards, Gokudera saw that his friend had on a concerned expression that he was trying not to show to him so that it wouldn't look like he was offering pity. "The economy's tough. It's not just you," Yamamoto said in a clear attempt to be supportive.

Gokudera shrugged.

Just then, Tsuna barged in, garbling a mix of words and looking to be out of breath. He had a pack of gum in his hand, his cell-phone in the other, and a shocked expression on his face. "Oh my god, guys, but my mom just called and she said that my cousin's just come over and I need to come right now. I'll catch hell if I don't go, so I gotta go, okay?"

And before either of his two friends could respond in any other way than look up from their homework sheets, Tsuna was back out the door.

"Well, it's getting to be near dinnertime," Gokudera said, still smiling at Tsuna' sudden appearance and disappearance. "I probably should be going too."

"What? Why's everyone trying to leave alla sudden?" exclaimed Yamamoto, raising up his hands on either side of him in a mock disgruntled position. "Stay and have a bite to eat. We're not even done with our homework yet!"

Gokudera thought of his options. He could stay with his friend in this comfortable setting and eat a decent dinner, he could go to his house to keep up appearances and put the rest of the night on a gamble on whether or not his other neighbors would act like normal people, or he could go to the park and have a bit of quiet on an empty stomach. He looked up to see Yamamoto smiling at him hopefully and made his decision. "Alright, then, if that's okay with your dad."

"Oh, I promise you, it's okay with my dad," said Yamamoto, smoothing down his short hair as he stood up to go to the kitchen. "He's practically in love with you because you offered to wipe tables at the restaurant. Come on, we'll make ourselves some sandwiches."

And so Gokudera forgot about his family and his homework for a moment and indulged in a serendipitous moment of blank serenity with Yamamoto and a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich.

* * *

**So this chapter was just basically character development.**

**If there's one thing that Gokudera's figuring out, is that he needs security first and foremost before he can try to figure out his desires.**

**Review, please.**


	7. Chapter 7

**I'm just warning you: things go down in this chapter.**

**You'll see what I mean when you read it.**

**Hope you like.**

* * *

It took a while for the targets, shooting aisle lines, and rectangle tents to be prepared correctly for the archery competition. Gokudera and the other members of his archery squad had been pulled out of classes to set up and when they were nearly done, the Osaka bus pulled up next to the field.

Hopping off the bus with their bags, the Osaka boys, instructed by their coach and trainer, ran to help the Namimori boys finish up the competition preparations. They were now ready to begin.

After going through the rudimentary introductions and official but rather unnecessary process of exchanging numerous handshakes all around, the order of shooting was determined. They would start with the single shots.

One of the Osaka archers shot. The arrow hit in the third circle from the center: seven points.

A Namimori archer took his place stepped into position. He shot five circles from the center: five points.

The next Osaka competitor lined up on the away-team's shooting aisle. One circle from the center: nine points.

The next Namimori archer passed by the now smirking Osaka archer, who had shot the best so far in the competition, as he stepped into the home-team's aisle. He aimed for a slightly longer period than the others and hit two circles from the center: eight points.

Despite it being well into the fall season, there were not a lot of clouds in the sky. The sun was shining fairly brightly and was at its apex, but it wasn't very warm, which Gokudera was thankful for. Still, he stood under a rectangle tent while he watched the competition. Gokudera was glad that there was hardly any wind; it would make shooting easier. He swung his bow loosely from his hand in slight nerves as he watched the other competitors shoot and waited his turn.

The Namimori coach raised a hand to indicate for the Osaka archer to pause. In a minute, the end-of-school bell rang shrilly and a dull roar was heard from the school buildings as the students got out of class. Given a nod to continue, the Osaka archer paused for a moment more, aimed, and fired. Six points.

It was now Gokudera's turn so he stepped up and got into position. He got ready to shoot and drew the string, pressing the taut line to his mouth as he aimed. He let go of the arrow and it flew through the virtually still air to imbed itself two circles from the center, close to the line of the bull's eye first circle but not quite there. Eight points.

The silver haired boy, running his fingers through his hair to try to let the collected heat out, went back under the tent's shade. From the academic building, a slow but building trickle of students was coming out through the main doors. A restless shifting of sand from behind him made Gokudera turn around.

Because one of the archers on the squad had gotten detention, he was prevented from competing as part of his punishment. Therefore, one of their managers, a sophomore boy who also could act as an extra, had suddenly been notified that he would have to step in for the empty slot in a couple of minutes.

The sophomore boy saw Gokudera looking at him. "I'm shooting for the first time today," the boy said, nervously plucking at his bow-string with a finger that seemed to have developed a tic. "Against Osaka, no less," he added unnecessarily: a clear sign of anxiety.

"Well, you're not _shooting_ for the first time," said Gokudera in what he felt was an inadequate attempt at heartening the boy. "You're just _competing_ for the first time. You've shot before, haven't you?"

"Yeah, but I have, like, no experience," continued the sophomore, who seemed to be putting himself down more with every second. "I don't really know how to shoot that well, and –" The jumpy boy cut off his own sentence when one of the seniors on the squad walked in under the tent, bowing his head as he went under the tent-flap because he was extremely tall. The senior was one of the better archers on the squad. The boy addressed the senior with a reverence. "How do you shoot so well?"

"Why? It's not, like, something you can just tell someone how to do," said the skinny giant with the usual senior superiority from somewhere a good foot or so above Gokudera, figuratively and literally. Gokudera purposely never stuck too close to him because he felt short and looked-down-upon whenever he did so, and he purposely stepped a couple of steps away now.

"What do you mean 'why'?" said the silver-haired teenager, feeling a little annoyed and too full of internally rising heat to be afraid of being a little smart-mouthed right back. "He's going to go up to shoot in about two seconds, that's why."

"Yeah," said the sophomore shakily, "and I've never shot before so I'm, you know, a bit tense. And also, I think there's a breeze so, like, what do you do about that?"

The stuck-up senior picked up a water bottle and drank from it. "Ah, buck up," he said. "Grow some fucking balls, will ya? What are you whining about for?"

"But –" said the sophomore before he was interrupted.

"There's nothing you can do about it now," the senior said as he capped the water bottle that he had just drunk out of. "All I'll say is just to man up and grow some fucking balls,"

Although the senior's scathing comment hadn't been directed at him, Gokudera wanted to snap back with a 'You said that twice,' or a 'He heard you the first time," but kept quiet because he didn't feel like picking a fight. 'Just let it go. It'd just be childish and immature to say that anyways. And it doesn't relate to you. You're just tired and getting worked up over nothing," he thought as he kept his mouth shut.

It suddenly popped into his mind that the senior was the kind of jock that could later grow up to be like the wannabe-macho stranger who screwed his neighbor. 'What an asshole,' Gokudera thought.

When the senior stopped drinking and went out into the field, Gokudera could stop watching him warily and look away back in the direction of the school building.

Yamamoto, followed by Tsuna, was coming towards him, running across the field. Gokudera waved at them and Yamamoto whooped in response as he ran faster to get to his friend. Gokudera felt his irritation at the senior fading away at the same pace that Yamamoto got closer to him.

"How's it going?" panted Yamamoto, arriving at the tent first and clutching onto a plastic folding table to regain his breath. "Did you shoot yet?"

"Yeah." Gokudera pointed to where the Namimori targets were although Yamamoto wouldn't be able to know which of the arrows stuck in the targets was his. "We're in the singles. I got eight points."

"That's really good!" said Tsuna, joining them under the tent. "And what about the others?"

"Not so good. It looks like we're getting an average of sixes while they're getting sevens."

Yamamoto nodded seriously, then suddenly clapped his hands together and grinned as a thought came into his head. "So the world-champion guy isn't here, then?"

Gokudera swung his bow easily from his hand and laughed. "No, thank god. We're already losing; we don't need to look any more pathetic while doing so. You gonna stay and watch?"

Then he suddenly remembered the conversation that they'd had with Ken and Chikusa and how they had said that archery wasn't a spectator sport. "It's a school night so it's fine if you can't stay." Gokudera shook his bangs over his eyes. "You guys will probably just make me nervous if you're watching me shoot anyways," he added to save himself from feeling hurt in case they decided to leave.

"How far in are we?" asked Yamamoto, not responding either way to Gokudera's leave for them to go. "You guys started early so do you end early as well?"

"We've gotten past the single-shots and now we're doing the triples so we're at least halfway through, but we still have a bit left to go," said Gokudera honestly.

"Well then. Since we're already pretty far in, it can't hurt to stay a little longer," said Yamamoto, sitting down on the ground with a finalized air and patting the space next to him for Tsuna to sit down as well.

"Alright then. I'll be going up to shoot in a little bit," said Gokudera, feeling pleased, among other things, that Yamamoto had used the pronoun "we" to include himself in Gokudera's team by implication.

A moment later, Gokudera was called out of the tent and was lining up at the shooting aisle again with a bracer strapped onto his forearm, his recurve bow in his hand, and three arrows in his quiver. He got into position so that his chest was perpendicular to the target and his feet shoulder-width apart. In his peripheral vision, he saw Yamamoto standing up and grinning brilliantly. Yamamoto looked like he wanted to yell in support or excitement but was keeping himself from making noise to avoid breaking Gokudera's focus.

The silver shag-haired teenager shrugged his shoulders, lifted his bow, aimed, and shot. Then again. He tossed his head to clear his bangs from his line of vision. And then shot again. Eight, seven, eight.

Reasonably satisfied, Gokudera stepped away from the shot-line and went back to the tent to be thoroughly congratulated by his friends. Perhaps because it was from a fellow athlete, or perhaps because it felt more personal when they had both competed against the same school, Yamamoto's congratulations felt more thrilling to him than did Tsuna's.

* * *

But when the thrill had worn out and the three friends had parted, Gokudera still had the problem of going to his house.

He did everything he could to avoid going at first, going the long way around through the city streets, looking at some pets in the window of the veterinarian's, and stopping at an ATM to pick up some money, but there came a point when there was nothing else he could possibly do to deterr or distract himself.

Shrugging and shifting his backpack on his shoulders, the conflicted teenager decided to push back the memory of the sexcapade from his mind and just go to the apartment.

As he walked down the floor hallway and unlocked his front door, thankfully not running into his skank of a neighbor, he heard a sound of running water from some other apartment on his floor. The sound reminded him that he needed to make a run to the laundry room.

Staggering out the front door with a basket of clothes, Gokudera went down to the basement floor where the pay-per-use laundry machines were. He found an empty washing machine, put his clothes and some other person's spare detergent in it, slipped in some coins in the coin-slot, and sat on one of the dryers on the other side of the room as the washer clanged into motion.

It was pleasant just sitting on the warm metal surface of the dryer and doing nothing in particular as he watched the washers gently vibrate as his clothes were spinning frantically inside in an attempt to get clean. The laundry room was always a pleasant place to be in the cold season because it felt warm and alive, and although it was a bother to move other people's clothes out of the way so he could wash his, what nuisances he might come across were more than made up for by the occasional loose change or sometimes even bills of money that he could scrounge for.

When his washer had stopped, Gokudrea looked for a dryer. All of them were full so he sought the one with the least amount of clothes to move. As he was moving the someone else's dry clothes on top of another dryer, he recognized a couple articles of clothing. The clothes he was dealing with was his woman neighbor's clothes.

Althogh Gokudera's first instinct was to step away from the offending articles of clothing by their association to their wearer, an idea came into his head. If he did his neighbor a good turn by bringing up her clothes to her, maybe she would repay him the favor by being more considerate and discreet about her sexual activities. There was not a high chance that this scratch-my-back-then-I'll-scratch-yours method would work, but Gokudera was getting desperate to avoid any other unpleasant incidences and he had long since learned that the woman's reaction to getting yelled at was to only worsen the offending behavior.

After he put his own clothes into the dryer, Gokudera staggered back up the stairs with the woman's clothing. He knocked awkwardly on his neighbor's door with his foot.

The door swung open and there his neighbor stood, looking like she was still recovering from the mother of all hangovers and with a sheet wrapped around her. Gokudera held out her clothes towards her at arms' length. "These are yours," he said.

The woman took them while muttering a thanks, the sheet around her slipping a little bit as she did so. Gokudera looked a little away, partly out of common respect and partly out of disgust. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Um, I want to talk about the other night."

The woman clutched her head and groaned. "Oh, don't ask me anything about the other night. I don't even remember what happened. Everyone keeps coming over here to talk to be about it! Can't you all come back later?"

Gokudera felt himself getting rapidly irritated and he briefly considered calling this a lost-case and giving up, but then decided to stand his ground and control his rising temper. He tried to look at the woman as squarely as he could without seeing her skimpy underwear. "No, I can't. And I remember perfectly well what happened. I'm not even putting it in vulgar terms when I say that you brought this random-ass stranger over and the two of you fucked like rabbits all night, part of it in the hallway, and probably woke up the whole damn floor up!"

The woman groaned again at Gokudera's loud tone, but then giggled as though pleased with herself. "Nothing new, then, is it?"

"Nothing new!-" Gokudera sputtered, feeling at a disbelief. "This has got to stop! I'm sick and tired of it, okay? The others don't have it as bad but I live right next door and I can fucking hear everything and it's not exactly what I want to be hearing as I'm trying to go to sleep! Look, I just did you a favor by getting you your clothes, so I would appreciate it if you actually kept them on for a couple of consecutive nights!"

The woman just giggled on an even higher tone. "Oh, you're so cute!" she shrilled.

"Are you still drunk?" exclaimed Gokudera.

One of the floor's other residents poked his head out of his door at the other end of the hallway. "Nice try, Gokudera, but she's a lost case, I'm afraid. The thing to do is just to buy earplugs. The rest of us have," he said in an attempt to dole out some friendly advice. The random resident went back into his apartment and his door closed with a sharp click, apparantly wanting nothing more to do with the sitaution now that he had put in his two cents.

Gokudera stood still in a haze of shock and confusion as the woman laughed as though she thought what the resident said was the most hilarious thing in the world. "Oh, lighten up!" she said to Gokudera, dropping the sheet and stepping closer to him. "What you need to do is have some fun once in a while. Want to try me?"

It was clearly no use trying to talk to the slut. Gokudera pushed away without saying anything else and fled back to his apartment. Just before the front door slammed behind him, he heard the woman call after him, "What's gotten into you?"

The silver-haired teenager stood in the middle of his apartment and tried to feel out an answer, if not for his neighbor, then for himself. There were a lot of things that had gotten into him that he wasn't about to, or even able to, voice out loud. He was sick and tired of living in a place where he couldn't even get the most basic security of having a suitable place to sleep without getting disturbed; he didn't like how nobody around him ever seemed to have a grasp on what they really wanted; he still had thoughts about the male hustler subconsciously wearing away at him at all times.

He hated having people like the senior and Ken and Chikusa around. He hated how he purposely retreated to behind his bangs when he was being defensive. He hated that his neighbor had disregarded his request and he hated himself for even thinking that such an innocent request could work. He hated the male hustler for coming into his life and fucking up the park playground where he had once been able to take refuge.

Gokudera got up. Just the thought of knowing that his woman neighbor was in the apartment next to his made being in his apartment unbearable. He was going to go and reclaim the park.

* * *

Gokudera shook his bangs in front of his face as he hit the cool night air. He shrugged his shoulders and put his hands deep in his pockets as he headed down to the city park.

The silver-haired teen started down at the asphalt of the street as he walked. Why did everything have to remain the same, going around in the same familiar cycle over and over again? Why couldn't things go on the straight path like archery, straight-shooting like an arrow, and generally hit the place that he was aiming for? It seemed that everything always turned on him, twisting in some mysteriously bent way to arrive back at the place he had started from. Of course, he didn't exactly have a target that he had been aiming for, so maybe that was part of the problem.

He thought of Yamamoto, how the sunny-faced baseball player went through his life with an ease, making little goals to achieve bit by bit like stepping-stones, getting to all his bases and speeding to the next one if he had enough leeway. He knew when to risk it for the next hurdle and when not, and if he had a mishap and struck out, there was always the next round for him where he could start fresh.

'But not for me,' thought Gokudera as he reached the park playground. 'My points just keep adding up and I can't mess around with the numbers. Even when I do manage to get off the ground, I just swing back."

He looked at the swings. 'It's time for a change,' he thought, and sat on the slide.

* * *

Gokudera kept flat on his ass on the slide for a long while, breathing in the hazy fumes of automobile air pollution, leftover wisps from the burning cigarettes around him, and the cool breezes of the autumn monsoon. His clothes were just a little too light for the dropping night temperature and his skin was starting to chill. He thought of going back to his house.

But his neighbor would still be in the apartment next to his, and his apartment would still be as cold and empty as ever, and nothing would have changed in the couple of hours that he had been out. Going back to his apartment meant that he had to start the tiresomely repeating cycle all over again, and he wasn't sure if he was up for that dreaded task in this current moment. He was just out of energy.

If the masses of homeless people could survive in the city without proper shelter, so could he. From his current viewpoint, it didn't seem like an impossibility that he end up as a homeless person after graduating high school so he could consider it as practice for the future.

But he wanted to see his friends, and to not seem like a loser in front of them, and to do that, he needed to go to school tomorrow. He made a plan to go back to the apartment to just have enough time to collect his clothes from the dryer, quickly take a shower and have a change of clothes, and pick up his backpack. If he was lucky, he wouldn't run across anyone, and even he did, whoever he ran into would pretend not to have seen him so they could to focus on their own troubles.

As Gokudera planned out his movements for the next new day, the current day was drawing to a close and night was rapidly falling. Soon, the only lights in the city were those of light pollution from artificial sources. And out of those, the only light shining on the bus terminal and its singular occupant was the streetlight next to it. The young, slim man at the terminal had the carefully arranged messy dark hair that Gokudera had seen so often in his dreams.

Gokudera was crouched on the bottom of the slide, hands braced on his knees, and he could feel his heartbeat thrumming under the palms of his hands. The hustler at the bus terminal was lightly swinging sideways on the sign pole again, switching his grip every so often and sometimes twirling around the pole completely. He was wearing what looked to be a grey shirt with a graphic design on the front and a pair of sweatpants. He epitomized the type of carelessness, the carefreeness that Gokudera wanted so desperately for himself. Although Gokudera could not make out the hustler's expression, he got the distinctive feeling that the hustler was comfortable just standing around at the terminal.

Gokudera instinctively felt for the back pockets of his pants, checking for his wallet. How much he was willing to spend, he didn't know, but in that moment he felt that it would be worth it to half-starve for a month if what he got in exchange was a couple of hours with the hustler to learn his secret. Gokudera halfway stood up, one hand still cautiously on the cool smooth plastic of the slide as though it was his safe base. In a moment he would take his hand off and make a break for the bus terminal.

He ended up numbly drifting towards the terminal, feeling fantastically awkward and more naïve with every step. When he was a couple of meters away, the hustler looked at him, not staring or watching in any specific way, but as though he was considering a possibility. Gokudera raised a hand in a weak greeting which the hustler received with a nod of what Gokudera saw as his perfectly chiseled chin. Up close, the hustler's dark hair looked even more beautifully mussed.

Gokudera found that he had no idea what to say. He realized that he had approached the hustler with no particular motive besides to be closer to him and that now that he had gotten his wish of seeing the mysterious young man for real, he didn't know what his next move should be. He partly wished that there was a secluded place where they could go to, but he also feared the outcomes that such a situation would generate. Whatever it was, everything that was in relation with the hustler fascinated and excited him.

One boy to another, they looked at each other wordlessly.

Then the hustler suddenly smiled. "What do you want, kid?"

Gokudera felt very young and his heart was pounding more than ever. He was undoubtedly a little frightened at whatever this was that he was getting into, but somewhere underneath the thrumming of his skin against the cool night air that both he and the hustler was breathing, he thought he felt ecstasy. This, however, didn't decrease the aura of suspense that he felt. He licked his lips nervously.

"Uh, can we go someplace? I don't exactly know, but…I just, want to talk, maybe."

The hustler held out his hand with crooked fingers for money. Gokudera got out his wallet without a thought and opened it, but realized that he had no clue as to what the usual payment for a prostitute was. The hustler came closer, and without taking the wallet out of Gokudera's hands, took out a couple of bills. For some curious reason, although logically he knew that it was shocking idiocy, Gokudera felt that he could trust the man to have taken only the amount that was due. The hustler stepped back and stuffed the money immediately into his pocket as Gokudera had seen him do before. "Down payment," he said. "Depending on what happens, I'll take more." He smiled again. "So. Where to?"

"I don't have anywhere we can go. Just…anywhere not too public."

The hustler clicked his tongue and shifted his weight to one leg. "Alright. Follow me."

* * *

They were still in the park, but off the road into the grassy heartland where there was a little open space amidst the wall of trees that was surrounding it to block out the wind. The hustler cleared out some dry leaves and sat down and Gokudera uncertainly followed suit next to him.

"So what do you want to do?" asked the hustler after a moment of silent nothingness. He wasn't smiling anymore and now seemed all business, but there was nothing stiff or serious about his demeanor and his air of casualness still somehow remained. "Do you want to talk, or…?" He put his hand on the bottom edge of his shirt and lifted it partially in a clear indication that he would rip it off without hesitation if given the word.

Gokudera was panicking as his eyes alternated between the strip of skin the hustler had exposed and the hustler's face. It was undeniable that he loved the idea of having the hustler naked and in direct contact with him. Unbidden, a visual of himself on his back, legs spread with the hustler's head at his crotch took over his mind. Above everything else right in that moment, Gokudera knew that he wanted the hustler's mouth, as warm and wet as it was in his fantasies, to be on him. But he was too awkward to ask or even do anything besides put his hands instinctively over his crotch where he had developed an erection.

The hustler took a glance at what Gokudera was doing and shucked off his shirt. Then he was in front of him, helping Gokudera out of his clothes while taking off the rest of his clothing as though stripping in the middle of a public park was a completely natural thing to do. And the way that the clearly experienced hustler went about things, it did seem natural and normal. Their clothes made a covering over the ground that they laid down on. The ground was still rough and the prostitute's body was more hard than soft, but Gokudera's mind was completely blown with sensation and it was all he could do to keep up with reality.

Perhaps because the physicality of the situation was so intense and unfettered that it bled over to the mentality, Gokudera blurted out a bit of truth. "I've never done this before," he said, putting one hand over the hustler's to stay him as his hand got to his boxers. Gokudera wasn't panicking anymore; everything felt _right_ and he was getting exactly what he had wanted for once and his teenage hormones were surging through his veins, but his mind was spinning.

The hustler didn't say anything but he glanced up at Gokudera's face and slowed down a little. Then everything was off and the hustler's hands were directly on him and Gokudera just clutched onto the hustler's shoulders and wrapped his arms around the other man's chest and tried to keep himself together.

When it was over and the hustler had taken some more money and left, Gokudera thought that the best part about the whole experience, the part that he would remember the most strongly, was the feeling of being chest-to-chest with the hustler and having the hustler's head with the wonderful dark hair on his shoulder.

He was a little upset that the hustler had left so quickly after he had done what he had been paid for, but he tried to fight the disappointment. Logically he knew that prostitutes existed to go away after performing sexual acts, but he couldn't help wanting the hustler's beautiful head back on his shoulder and have it stay there while he slept and have it still be there when he woke up. Now that the hustler had gone, Gokudera was left feeling empty and spent.

Gokudera had expected that he would fall asleep near immediately after he ejaculated, but that this did not happen did not surprise him. His second, far more fantastic, encounter with the hustler had fulfilled the desires that the first encounter had produced, but it had also revealed a deeper want for a type of human connection that seemed unattainable.

Only one thing was clear: he would never mention this incident to anyone.

* * *

**Even to me, this chapter seems a bit out there. **

**I mean, you would think that if Gokudera is so bothered by his neighbor's overt sexuality then he would avoid sexual encounters for himself, but that's not how the mind works, I'm afraid. **

**But what do I know: I'm a sado-masochist.**

**Review, please.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Hey, sorry this update was a bit slow.**

**I got a little off the direct track and tried to delve into a little more into the teenage boy mind.**

**Hope my efforts weren't in vain.**

* * *

Gokudera snuck back in the house. He had hardly gotten any sleep, but his mind seemed strangely clearer than ever as he carefully collected his things and crept back out.

He almost laughed to himself at his current situation. Here he was, on a regular school day, going to school as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and yet last night had been the most extraordinary night of his life.

Would it show on his face or in his mannerisms that he had changed? Would dogs sniff him and scamper away in fright; would the pigeons on the overhead electrical lines fly off with restless wings when he passed under? Would the people on the public streets turn their faces away and would his friends look at him strangely?

But as he walked his normal route to school, the street passersby took no notice of him as usual and no buildings jumped out of his path. The same city that he and the hustler had owned during the night with a few scraps of money and a lack of clothes had reclaimed itself with the daylight. It was horrible and splendid and most of all, curious.

As Gokudera sat in class, he thought about the hustler. Thoughts about the mysterious man came easily; there was no feeling of guilt or shame anymore, just personal interest. His wallet was now emptier as a result of the interaction, but so was his mind, and that seemed a more than satisfactory tradeoff.

How gorgeous it all was, to have had that glorious moment when his body had taken over everything else, how unbelievably _good_ it had felt, and not have to deal with the consequences. That fantastic fragment of time with the prostitute held no meaning besides the literal event. It might as well have only happened in his mind.

But it hadn't.

As Gokudera sat in his seat, copying down the notes from the board with an automatic hand, he knew that nothing factual about his life had changed. He was still the shorter-than-average teenage boy who stayed with his set group day in and day out, who had big dreams for himself that he had not the faintest idea how he was supposed to achieve, and who didn't have much figured out. After his morning classes, he would no doubt meet up with Yamamoto and Tsuna for lunch, go to his afternoon classes, and then meet up with them again to do homework or just hang out. Just like always, he would hesitate before going to his apartment as he always inevitably ended up doing, and if he couldn't stand being in his apartment, he would go to the park.

His daily routine would go on as mundane and normal as it had always done.

And yet the hustler had made him realize something – had changed _him_. Gokudera now had the distinct sense that even if all the rest of his life spiraled out of control and went to shit, he would have the consciousness of his body, solid and firm and inseparable from himself and very much _his_. He thought it wonderful that his physical form, at least, knew exactly what it wanted and responded immediately to positive stimulus. It didn't have to rethink things or even think at all.

What he had been too awkward and shy to say to the hustler, his body had communicated for him. There was no room for mistakes. How simple and awesome was that?

Gokudera cast a discreet glance around the classroom at the couple of boys who had girlfriends. He thought of how, during break periods between classes or at lunch, the boys would both brag and complain about how far or not they had gotten with their girls and how they had to constantly watch themselves and make little sacrifices or gifts to keep what little they had coming.

The apparent loss of autonomy – or being "whipped," as the guys put it – had been a good part of the reason why he had always resisted the idea of getting into a relationship. What was the point of entering an arrangement or a deal, because that was essentially all that a relationship was, when the amount or satisfaction that one got from it was less than the energy and trouble that one had to put into it? He had always seen the whole concept of a relationship as a corrupt bargain, as a double standard, and after watching his father go through his various mistresses of the month and his classmates get dragged along by their dates, his opinion hadn't changed.

So it was amazing to Gokudera that all he had needed to do was hand over some money, this sum being probably only a fraction of what his dating peers had to spend on their girls, and get the best desired, most direct, and overall fairest end result immediately afterwards with no repercussions whatsoever the next day.

'But what about the park? That's changed. If there's one lasting consequence, it's that the park isn't a place for me to chill anymore. It's been charged with something else… lust, maybe." Gokudera rested his silver head on his right hand and stopped taking notes. 'No, it's not that. Joy... or perhaps something even stronger than that. Perhaps elation.'

He switched hands and started taking notes again. Although it had undeniably hurt him a little the last night to see the hustler go so quickly, the slight pain that he had felt then had now completely dissipated.

'Well, of course he went away," the teenage boy thought with something that felt like a revelation. 'But he was _going_, not _leaving_. There's a distinction of purpose. He wasn't leaving me because he specifically didn't want to be with me, he was going away because that's just the normal order of things in this sort of deal.'

He switched hands and started taking notes again. 'If I had paid him for a little more of his time, he would have stayed, and would have stayed without hesitation because it wouldn't have been his choice to deny me when he needs the money that I would have been offering him.'

Gokudera knew then that even if he saw the hustler again at nighttime, he would not feel an obligation or a pull to approach him. There was no reason. The endgame had finished; there was no follow-up. He and the hustler were no longer connected to each other in the present that the transaction had finished, was past.

And if he ever ran across the hustler in the daytime and they recognized each other, he knew that the hustler would show no sign of having seen him before and that he himself would pretend not to have noticed the man, and it would all be completely accepted and normal and beautiful. It was comforting.

What wasn't comforting was that all this, no matter how gratifying and enlightening and life-changing it might have been, hand to be kept secret with no exceptions. It wouldn't be hard to keep quiet about having used a prostitute, but that it had been a _male_ prostitute and that he was attracted to males would take some more doing to not give away.

Although, or perhaps because Gokudera had never given serious thought to his sexuality before, it did not seem an earth-shattering revelation that his sexual orientation was directed towards other guys. From experiencing firsthand how his body knew what he wanted and reacted instinctively, it was definitely a normal condition and he perfectly understood and accepted that without any problem, but along with it he accepted, just as naturally, that he could not let anyone know about it.

And for the time being, it seemed to be a decent enough terms of affairs.

* * *

Because Gokudera took so many advanced honors classes, his classes were quite a bit different from either Tsuna's or Yamamoto's except for the mandatory ones. Lunchtime would be the first that he would meet them properly, and he felt a subtle pressure when the bell for the end of morning classes rang to signify the lunch period.

Along with the rest of the simultaneously moving rush of students, Gokudera made his way to his usual table in the cafeteria where his friends were already seated. He took in a breath, exhaled, and sat down.

"Hey guys, what gives?"

"Nothing much," they said, as they all rose back up to get their lunch trays from the food counter. "How are you doing with the make-up work for the classes you missed?"

Amidst all of the other excitement of the previous night, Gokudera had completely forgotten about making up the classes that he had missed during the archery competition. "Oh," he said, thinking fast, "I haven't talked to my teachers about it, yet, but I expect that there won't be much."

Tsuna sighed. "Lucky you. We just got told that we're having a presentation next Monday. Not one of your classes; just me and Yamamoto. You know, one of those graded ones that go in the books as an exam score? There's so little time to prepare and I don't understand any of the material that we learned this quarter; it's hopeless. And why is everything always on a Monday?"

"Aww, don't listen to him," interjected Yamamoto, pushing Tsuna out of Gokudera's face so he could poke in. He was grinning knowingly. "He's just making a big fuss out of it because Kyoko's in his presentation group and he's feeling the pressure to impress," he explained.

"Not that I'm complaining about getting to spend time with her," Tsuna said, flushing and lowering his voice, looking pleased and torn at the same time, "but I would have liked it to be at a time and on a topic in which I won't make a complete embarrassment out of myself, that's all!" he hissed, looking around to see if anyone else had heard.

Gokudera found himself smiling wide enough to split his face. He had spent nearly all of his morning classes in a zoned-out phase, questioning himself, what he truly wanted, his new philosophical perception in life, and had been feeling quite a bit separated from everyone else by his new terrible secret. And now he was with his friends and they were all together trying to figure out their little everyday hindrances.

He couldn't understand it, but it was marvelous.

"Don't look at me like I'm being ridiculous!" cried his panicking friend, who apparently thought that Gokudera was smiling at him. The brown-haired boy was so agitated that he very nearly tipped his lunch tray over. "This is a real crisis! Everyone knows I'm not much of a speaker! I'm going to humiliate myself!"

His friend's exclamation didn't stop Gokudera from feeling like he had touched a mix of pure happiness and a bit of insanity. He just laughed and laughed.

* * *

But once the afternoon classes started, Gokudera started crashing so thoroughly that he just couldn't stay awake. After waking him up several times only to have him fall straight back to sleep within seconds, the teacher concluded that this abnormal behavior must be a result of some sickness, declared that he should get proper sleep if he was going to sleep at all, and sent the tired boy off to the school infirmary.

Dismissed from class, Gokudera trudged along the hallways slowly, the backs of his fingers trailing the walls as he walked by the other classroom doors as he went.

It was a kind of exquisite exhaustions that he felt, heady and sweet and thick and all over the nerves and muscles of his body. He wanted to just curl up in the middle of the hallway and stop everything, still time, and preserve everything as it was in plasma.

He had reached the infirmary and he nearly fell through the door when he turned the handle. He handed the nurse the slip from his teacher and was led to a curtained-off area where there were several small cots. Gokudera just had time to drop his bag and get off his shoes before he collapsed on one of the cots and his mind emptied of all thought as he dropped into blank oblivion.

* * *

When Yamamoto walked into his last class of the day, he automatically looked for Gokudera and Tsuna. Last period math class was one of the few scheduling match-ups that all three of them had together, so he always looked forward to it. He spotted Tsuna and sat next to him, getting ready for class before the bell rang. Gokudera wasn't in class yet, but he usually cut it pretty close on the start-of-class bell so this wasn't anything out of the norm.

But he still hadn't showed when class started and the teacher started doing roll call. "Gokudera?" The teacher looked around the classroom for the missing boy. "Has anyone seen him today?"

Just as Yamamoto was about to say that he had seen Gokudera at lunch but didn't know where he was now, another student spoke up.

"He got sent to the infirmary," the student said. "I think he's signed off as out sick for the rest of the day."

The teacher nodded, finished taking attendance, and directed the class to the practice workbook section of the math textbook.

As he found the correct page and started looking at the first problem, Yamamoto spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Tsuna.

"Why d'you suppose he's in the infirmary? He's not the type to miss class just because of a cold. And he didn't look sick to me when we saw him at lunch, did he?"

Tsuna chewed gently on the cap of his pen. "No, he didn't look sick to me either but maybe he has the flu? You know the flu's around this time of year and it doesn't really have any warning symptoms. Or maybe it's nothing and he just got a headache. He gets migraines regularly, so it's about time anyway."

Yamamoto felt a little stupid for not having thought of either the seasonal flu or of Gokudera's tendency to get a migraine-a-month. He clicked his pen restlessly. "Yeah, it's probably just a migraine or something."

'But still, it's strange," he thought. 'He had such dark circles under his eyes at lunch and he looked tired. It looked like he didn't sleep too well last night. Maybe it was because of the construction near his house that he mentioned before?"

"Hey, how do you solve this problem?" Tsuna whispered, interrupting Yamamoto's musings and pointing at a math problem on the textbook that they had between them on the desk.

"I haven't gotten there yet," responded Yamamoto as he started working out the first few problems on his sheet of notebook paper. 'Oh well, I'll find out what the matter is after school,' he concluded to himself as he got down to doing math.

* * *

Meanwhile, Gokudera had woken from his brief but intense power-sleeping session and was now sitting up on his cot. From the looks and sounds of it, the only people in the infirmary were himself and the nurse on the other side of the curtain.

He looked around.

The secluded space he was in was fairly sparse. The only furniture that he could see in the room behind the curtain was six cots which were all equipped with the same kit of thin white sheets and a flat pillow.

A long window directly at his front on the opposite side of the wall had a plastic potted plant on the ledge and bright sunlight shining through the glass that illuminated the dust in the air. The walls were a creamy beige with large medically-themed posters taped on every meter or so as a means of horrible interior decoration, boredom-alleviator, or propaganda.

Having nothing else to do, Gokudera glanced over the posters.

The poster closest to him was about respiratory diseases and listed a couple of the nastier ones such as lung cancer, chronic asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema and the effects. It was clear that its purpose was to warn and discourage high schoolers from smoking.

'Do they really think that such transparent ploys such as this will work on teenagers?' Gokudera wondered. 'It's not like anyone doesn't know the dangers of smoking; they just do it anyway to get high. In fact, because teenagers are often so rebellious, posters like this probably convince people to smoke more than deter them.'

He glanced over the window to the next poster, which was about health and fitness. A colorful food pyramid with little pictures advocated healthy eating and discouraged the viewer from consuming too many simple sugars and fats. Some other juvenile cartoon pictures of various types of sports equipment encouraged exercise and emphasized the importance of keeping fit.

Gokudera just snorted. 'Meh. Who cares?' For some reason, he thought of the school seniors, jocks all, who thought that they were so much better than everyone else because they were captains of the sports teams.

Another showed a check-list of mandatory vaccinations and documented the process and abilities of the immune system. Gokudera didn't recall getting any of those shots, but seeing how he hadn't gotten measles, smallpox, polio, whooping cough, or B.C.G. – 'Whatever that is,' he thought – or any of the other diseases, he must have gotten the shots by the government health care system.

There was a collection of little dot-like indents on his left upper arm that he knew were shot-scars from when he was an infant. He could feel the tiny circled indents in his arm with his fingertips when he touched the place lightly, as he did now, rolling up his left shirt sleeve. Without looking, he knew from memory that the indents were in a rectangular-grid formation, aligned in geometric order like a matrix.

The next poster was on sexually transmitted diseases (STD's).

Gokudera felt a quick jolt of interest and fear as he remembered the hustler. He moved to a different cot in order to read the poster better.

The poster listed a couple of common sexually transmitted infections such as syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, HIV/AIDS. It explained that these diseases were sometimes spread by skin-contact but mostly by contact with bodily fluids such as blood or semen. A bold warning in the middle, which the poster was clearly focused on, discussed the ways to prevent these diseases by using protection or, as was favored by emphasis, simple abstinence.

The teenage boy found himself grinning fit to burst. He was feeling that mix of happiness and insanity again which he now associated with his adolescance.

'Abstinence? Yeah, good luck with that. You'd have better luck handing out condoms.'

Gokudera could not remember if the hustler had used a condom or not. He hadn't looked down to see what the hustler was doing or what was going on once their clothes were off, and even if he had, it would have been hard to make out anything in the dark. He remembered only a short period of naked fumbling followed by a longer period of raw pleasure in which he had stopped using his mind altogether and kept his eyes tightly shut.

He wasn't sure exactly what had happened between him the hustler except that it had been something that had been stunningly effective in getting him off. He just remembered wet and friction. He was absolutely positive about only three things: that he hadn't kissed the hustler, that the hustler hadn't kissed him, and that he hadn't been penetrated by the hustler.

Gokudera knew, as he sat comfortably in a ball on top of the cot, that he would not be able to sit like this without some discomfort and pain if the latter possibility had happened. And yet, he wished that it had. If he was going to go off the deep end, if he was corrupted or ruined, if he had gotten an STD and crashed his immune system despite the shot-scars that he could still feel on his arm beneath the pads of his fingers, he might as well have gone all the way.

It wasn't as though he hadn't been aware of the dangerous possibilities before. He had known all about them before: the poster he had just read hadn't told him anything that he hadn't already known. But he had played a gamble; had subjected his body to sexual Russian roulette; had thrown caution to the winds as he had pulled the hustler close to him in the eye of the hurricane. He couldn't step out now or he'd be torn apart, so he might as well plant his flag and declare his territory and own what he had gotten into.

Gokudera laid back down on the cot.

'I wish that he'd fucked me,' he thought. 'I wish that he had just bent me over some bench and let me have it. I don't care – and I wouldn't have cared – if it hurt. If he suddenly materialized next to me right now, I would give him all the rest of my money and beg him to fuck me.'

He knew it was ridiculous and immature and just plain senseless and reckless to the utmost degree that he was thinking this, but he couldn't help wanting it all the same.

'I want it to happen. I _want_ it.'

He felt childish, incredibly so, but it was a feeling that he was enjoying at the moment. It felt strangely irresponsible and free.

'How would it feel to have an STD and know that I could never have a physical relationship with anyone else without bringing them down with me?' he mused. 'How would it feel to know that my immune system could crash at any moment and that I could be killed by virtually nothing in my weakened state? What would it be like to live on a constantly wavering timeline?'

From a bell outside in the hallway, the end-of-school bell rang. The familiar roar of indiscriminate student voices rose up like a united force. Gokudera didn't move and let the chaotic mix of sounds wash over him.

'Would it make life more exciting to live by constantly moving the goalposts?'

He started to feel tired again. There was something about having awareness, however vague, of his desires and being teased by being given just a taste of it that floored him. He stopped reading the poster and stared up at the ceiling vapidly.

Just then, he heard a knock on the infirmary door. He heard someone scuffling in, although he could not see who it was because they were on the other side of the curtain. He propped his head up with his pillow but didn't move anything else.

Then the obscuring curtain was ripped aside and in stepped Yamamoto, his tan skin contrasting but not clashing with the cream backdrop. He looked completely out of place in the set-aside partitioned area, his muscles defined in just the right way through his loose shirt.

Gokudera looked at him. Yamamoto looked uncommonly healthy. He didn't belong in a place for the infirmed or beaten like he was.

"Oh, you're here!" Yamamoto exclaimed, stepping out of the sunlight and coming to the side of the cot. "Are you feeling alright? What happened?"

"Just tired and had to sleep," said Gokudera as cheerfully as he could while being on a cot. He did an uncomfortable one-shouldered shrug while still lying down. "I guess I should get up now. School's over, isn't it?"

"Yeah. So…if you're feeling okay, can you get up?"

Gokudera, with a little difficulty, halfway sat up on his cot. He shrugged again, this time a little more normally.

"No choice, is there? School's gonna close. Besides, I really am okay."

Yamamoto shifted back and forth and moved his hand in his jacket pocket, debating on whether or not he should offer his friend a hand to get up from the cot. In the end, feeling just a little bit too shy to take the initiative, he decided to move a little aside and fetch his friend's shoes, which had been kicked off near the foot of the cot. He stepped a little to the side and slid the shoes over.

"How were you sick?" asked Tsuna, who had just come in after visiting his locker. His brown hair had spiked everywhere and in every direction on his head, his bag was askew after having jumped down the stairs, and he was quite an adorably disheveled sight. Gokudera would have smiled at him had he not been distracted by Yamamoto.

Yamamoto was the cover-boy, the poster model for the health and fitness poster that he was standing next to. He was standing a little behind the end of the cot, directly in between the window and Gokudera, and was being struck from behind by a wide arc of sunlight. The day was far in enough that the sun was positioned right at the window, and the star's solar power was so strongly bright that it seemed to be something solid entering its force into the athletic boy as though Yamamoto were being charged by it.

His skin took on a golden glow where it met the light to create a fuzzy electric outline all around his upper body and indistinctly marked where he ended and the rest of the world began. The window was cracked open at the bottom, and the autumn wind that always accelerated around the afternoon swirled away the dust from the ledge and nudged outward at the cheap synthetic material of the curtains, all of which was illuminated by light.

In a way, the whole combination looked like Yamamoto was sending out his own energy, bleeding out his colors and disintegrating into the rest of the universe as stardust. The partitioned space was dim, only being lit by natural means, and his face couldn't be clearly seen, but Gokudera felt the complex muscles of his face easily pull up the corners of his lips and he knew that Yamamoto would be smiling back at him.

'I want him to pick me up and carry me to that place in the park,' Gokudera wished as his facial muscles pulled ever more tightly upwards. In his mind, he was back to that private world, that happy place to which he had been taken by the hustler, which he had later conquered for himself. 'I want him to be my navigator there.'

The sleepy boy wasn't so tired that he couldn't get off the cot by himself, but he wanted skin-on-skin contact, so he reached up a hand for Yamamoto to lead him up. He thought that there was a delicious irony that he was the pioneer and he was enlisting a total novice to lead him in the way he had already gone. Seeing Yamamoto's hand squirm within the confines of the jacket pocket, Gokudera wondered if Yamamoto was internally squirming, if the other boy had any clue of his intentions.

Yamamoto took Gokudera's hand.

And pulled him up.

He wasn't in front of the window anymore, the light from outside made the silver-haired boy wince at the visual shock and turn his head away. But instead of feeling like the moment had been broken, he merely felt like it was taken like a picture, a blank slate of white flash that glowed red when he closed his eyes. Gokudera opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times to adjust, and started putting on his shoes.

"Oh, it was nothing,' he said, shoes on and turning to Tsuna with his backpack in his hand. Gokudera shook his head to try to clear his mind, or perhaps to close it. "I just fell asleep in class, that's all." He rubbed his eyes, partly because he was tired, but more because he kept on seeing wonderful visions that he didn't know how to interpret. He was almost excited for night to fall so he could sleep and dream even more fantastical things.

Suddenly struck by a bout of iron-deficiency, Gokudera saw his vision go briefly black and staggered, losing his balance for a split second. Tsuna yelped as Gokudera swayed rather sharply to the side and crashed against a wall that was fortunately nearby. Yamamoto gripped Gokudera's left upper arm, right where the vaccination shot-marks were.

"What was that? You look like you maybe need to sit back down," he said. His shoulders were stiff with shock as he kept his grip on his friend, not trusting him to stand.

"No, no." Gokudera tossed his head in a loosely circular movement to clear his bangs. "And even if I do, I'll sit somewhere that's not at this school."

Tsuna pulled the curtain aside and held the door open as the three checked out of the infirmary. As Gokudera, still unwaveringly held by Yamamoto, came into the hallway, he swayed for another brief moment and then yawned. The three walked in relative silence until they reached the school gates. Gokudera yawned again.

"So. Where to?"

Yamamoto waved vaguely around the street with one hand, loosening his two-handed grip on his friend's arm for a second before resuming his hold as though he thought that his friend would faint and fall on his face the moment he let go. Tsuna winced and hesitated.

"Uh, the thing is…" The apologetic boy scratched his brown head of hair. "Kyoko's making a google doc and my group's having an online group meeting and I have to do some things to prepare for that and…yeah. I could stay, but only for a little bit." He glanced guiltily at Gokudera and then at his watch.

"Don't worry about it," said the addressed boy immediately. "It's Kyoko. We know. Good luck, eh?" Yamamoto smiled in agreement and nodded with him. "Have fun!"

Tsuna started off down the street to his house while his two friends watched him go. There seemed to be a spring in Tsuna's step, born of happiness and anxiety at his chances with his crush. Gokudera smiled as an idea started to form inside his head.

The boy beside him tugged at his arm. "Where do you want to go? Do you want me to take you home?"

Gokudera looked up very slightly. Although it couldn't be seen among all the city buildings, the sun was going down and he knew that in a couple of hours, the city would be lit largely by artificial light. In a couple of hours, the night would be well on its way to falling.

"No, let's go to your house. You can tell me what I've missed so far. We can do our homework, and _then_ you can take me home if you still want."

Yamamoto nodded, and the two set off on their way.

* * *

**In case anyone has the wrong idea, Gokudera isn't diabolically planning anything. In fact, he has no plan.**

**He's just trying to take what he wants, but he's not going to force anyone to do anything.**

**Review, please.**


	9. Chapter 9

**There's nothing to say.**

**I just hope you like it.**

* * *

After starting down the street wordlessly, Yamamoto slowly let go of Gokudera and walked alongside him, glancing at him every once in a while in case signs of swaying should reoccur.

Gokudera walked with his eyes on front, seeing his friend check up on him on regular intervals through the corner of his eye and basking in the attention while pretending not to notice. He had a very sharp consciousness that Yamamoto's hand was swinging inches from his own hand every step they walked together. He wanted to reach out and take the teasing bait that was dangling right there next to him.

His consciousness of the inappropriateness of such an action deterred him from making a move, but his newly developed awareness of his desire encouraged him to go for it.

He stared at his friend's hand. It was colored tan on the back, like the rest of Yamamoto's body would be, but the palms were a lighter shade. The hands would probably be a little rough from being so active in sports, but Gokudera didn't know for sure. He had never really held Yamamoto's hand. If he reached out just a tiny bit and take the hand that was dangling so teasingly near his own, he would know what it felt like.

Gokudera lifted his hand slightly and stuffed it into his pants pocket.

'I can't. It wouldn't feel right,' he thought, shaking his head at himself. 'It just wouldn't feel right.' He tossed his head to clear his sight.

"So, uh, what did the nurse say?" asked Yamamoto, clutching onto his backpack straps now that he had reluctantly let go of Gokudera. "About your condition or whatever I mean."

"The nurse didn't say anything to me. I just handed over the note from my teacher and said that I needed to sleep and then I just slept. I basically know as much as you do."

The other boy shook his head. "No, what I don't understand is, why did you suddenly get like that? Tired and sleepy and the sort of falling thing just then. Did you, like, not sleep last night? Cuz of, I don't know, the construction you mentioned that one time? (Chapter 6)"

Gokudera deliberated to himself on what to say.

'Obviously, I can't tell the truth. I mean, telling _Yamamoto_, of all people, that I spent the night with a prostitute, male or otherwise, in a public park? Yeah right. I guess I could lie and say that I was kept up by construction. He's trusting enough to just believe that, probably. But I feel like that would be taking advantage of him. I'll just be evasive."

"Just couldn't get to sleep for some reason. Maybe I'm lacking nutrients or something," he said, sidestepping the question. "The falling thing, as you put it, was because of iron-deficiency. It happens sometimes when I move too suddenly. I just sort of black out and my head gets all swirly for a second. But it's nothing."

The silver-haired boy gestured the last part by waving his hands in circular motions around his head. Although this wasn't the intended effect, it looked like he was miming insanity. Yamamoto, for his part, didn't look very comforted or very convinced that his friend's condition was 'nothing,' but kept quiet.

They were now at Yamamoto's apartment building. Yamamoto pressed the elevator button and played with his backpack straps as they waited for the elevator to come. Gokudera observed his friend's fidgeting with an amused smile.

"Maybe it's you that needs to go to the nurse, not me. You sure you don't have ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) or something?" he teased.

Yamamoto broke out of his worried haze and grinned. When the elevator doors opened just then, he playfully pushed Gokudera into the metal box. The elevator closed itself automatically and lifted them up.

Stepping right behind the other boy as the two got off on their floor, Gokudera politely looked away as Yamamoto put in the numbers for the front door lock. Each number that was pressed made a little uniform beep sound and when the code combination had been input correctly, a click from the lock signified that the door had been opened.

They both went in and Gokudera automatically set himself down in the living room as per usual. Yamamoto went into his bedroom to get out his things for their homework session.

As he waited in the relative silence, Gokudera could still hear the beeps of the number buttons on the door lock in his head.

'Wouldn't it be beyond anything imaginable to be able to come here at night, to just poke in the numbers on the lock and come in?'

Gokudera looked over to Yamamoto's bedroom. The door was halfway open and he could catch glimpses of Yamamoto as he went back and forth across the bedroom.

'It'd be dark, and I'd have to feel my way to his room, but I'd be able to just open the door and have him lying on his bed, sleeping. Just a few numbers on the front door lock are all that's keeping me from having this. Just a few mysterious beeps.'

Gokudera's silver bangs hung over his face as he bent his head to rummage through his backpack for his study materials. He got out his textbooks, his notebook, his pencilcase, and his reading glasses, placed them neatly on the coffee table in front of him, and looked on in mild interest as Yamamoto dashed into the living room, dropped down his things, and dashed back out into the kitchen.

'But I'm glad that I don't know what the beeps mean; that I don't know what the code combo is. I don't need any more impossible choices in my life. Besides, even if I did somehow get into his bedroom at night and have him stretched-out in front of me, what would I even do?'

Yamamoto came out of the kitchen with two bottles of Starbucks coffee in his hands. He sat down on the opposite side of the coffee table and slid one of the bottles of coffee across the table to his guest before opening his notebook for math class. Gokudera nodded in thanks as he took the coffee.

"Do you want me to brief you on what you missed the last two classes?" Yamamoto asked, flipping through the pages.

"Yeah, sure," replied Gokudera absentmindedly as he looked at his friend. The way that Yamamoto looked in the light was a sight that he was very familiar with, and he had seen him in the afternoon enough times to know how he looked at dusk. But he realized that he had never seen him when it was almost completely dark.

Gokudera opened his coffee bottle. As the bottle opened, the resulting sound as the cap inverted itself sounded like a click.

He was in the dark and the front door lock had clicked open under his hand. Looking across the living room from the front doorway, he could see a glint that shone off of Yamamoto's shiny bedroom door handle. The glint led him on the straight route from the front door to the bedroom which Gokudera followed devoutly like a medieval pilgrim on the search for the Holy Grail. His hand closed on the spark as he turned the handle. He gently pushed on the door and slipped in, closing the door quietly behind him.

Yamamoto's bedroom was almost completely void of light, nothing but the dim glow of an alarm clock and a weak sliver of city streetlight that shone through a crack in the window shade. Gokudera waited for his eyes to adjust. When his pupils had expanded fully, he could just barely see Yamamoto, a lean figure wholly in the night shadows and only partly under the bed covers.

Then Yamamoto spoke and Gokudera was back in the reality of the sunlit living room and away from his imagination. The teenage visionary took a sip from his coffee as though nothing had happened and listened to what his friend was saying.

"Okay, so here are the notes. You probably know all this stuff already though," said Yamamoto, holding out his notebook at the correct page. "Hey, when you're done writing the notes, and if you don't have that much homework of your own, d'you think you can help me with my presentation?"

"Sure. And thanks." Gokudera took the notes.

'If I ever manage to see him at night,' he thought as he put on his reading glasses and started copying the notes down, 'I'll just look at him. That'd be enough just to get to look at him.'

* * *

Tsuna' panic had decreased somewhat after he had studied Kyoko's google doc. It turned out that his feeling of inadequacy had largely been unfounded; he actually knew most of the information that he needed for his presentation.

But even though he had already typed in and finished his assigned part for the presentation, he still couldn't help but feel slightly nervous as the time for the online group meeting approached.

But when the time came, there was nothing to do about it except log on his Skype account and hope for the best.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kyoko was the only other member of his presentation group that was online. They were both on video-caller.

"Hey Tsuna," she said.

Tsuna, not being a very active online-communicator, wasn't exactly sure where the microphone was, but he spoke into the general air in front of his computer and hoped that the mike would adequately pick up his voice.

"Hey," he replied. He was a little alarmed at how casual his tone sounded.

"I read what you wrote on the google doc. It looks pretty good!" Kyoko smiled.

'She's smiling! At me!' Tsuna thought with a surprised thrill. He had seen her smile countless times, but he could not recall if she had ever smiled specifically and solely at him for something that he had done. 'Her smile's so pretty!'

"Oh, is it?" he said, doing what he thought was a marvelous job at keeping chill. "Well that's good." He cleared his throat. "Uhm, I was a bit worried about the presentation at first, but I guess it's turned out alright."

"Yeah, it doesn't like there'll be any problem. Or there won't be if the others in the group turn up. Where are they?"

"I'm not sure." Tsuna was secretly rejoicing that the others hadn't logged on yet. "But it's only been about a minute so they'll probably show soon enough." He internally hoped that they wouldn't show up for at least another couple of minutes.

Tsuna frantically tried to think of what to say in the precious few moments of alone-time that he had left with Kyoko. 'Okay, this is your first big shot. You never get to talk with her as privately as this at school so you have to make good use of this time! Quick, think of something! Oh gods, she still looks cute even through the crappy computer camera!'

"How do you feel about this project?" he blurted, going for the easy conversation topic of school-related things. "You think it's any good?"

"It's okay. I honestly don't know if the presentation itself will help us learn anything, but I like the class in general. Considering that this goes in the grade-book as a test score, I think it's much better than just taking a written test." Kyoko flicked a strand of her light brown hair with her finger. "Don't you think?"

"Yeah!" Tsuna agreed, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. "And uhm, I once heard somewhere that you retain 90% of what you teach, and since this presentation is basically peer-teaching, it should actually be beneficial to our learning," he added.

"Oh, that's interesting! Really? I didn't know that." Kyoko smiled, and even on Tsuna's computer screen, her smile seemed warmer and more heartfelt than usual.

On the side of the screen, several new online user signals popped up, signifying the arrival of the other group members and the end of Tsuna's golden moment with his big crush.

'But still, that was definitely something. Kyoko's definitely something,' Tsuna thought happily, as his group launched into a full-scale discussion about the presentation. 'I really feel like I got a shot!'

The rest of the group online meeting went by in a comfortably happy haze for at least one of the presentation members.

* * *

"Do you figure that that was a good enough of a brief? Or…" Gokudera waved a pencil in the still air with one hand as he used the other to hold a page in Yamamoto's textbook.

"Hmm…" Yamamoto pouted a little in thought, tilted his head, and then smiled. "Nah, I think you covered everything for me. I think I'm ready for my presentation, actually." The prepared boy took his textbook back from his friend and closed it. "I wonder how Tsuna is doing with his."

"The more important question, I would say, is how he's doing with Kyoko," corrected Gokudera. "He wouldn't be so hung-up on this if it weren't for her."

"Maybe not." Yamamoto shrugged and laughed. "Him being so hung-up on her, it's not something that I pretend to understand."

"Me neither. But it does get me thinking. I mean, what happens if he does get together with her? Does that mean that we'd be secondary to him?" Gokudera shrugged. "I just feel like there'd be an imbalance in things or something."

Yamamoto reached across the table and nudged him on the shoulder. "What have you been smoking?" He grinned. "Cuz I want in."

Gokudera laughed. "Yeah right. You? You're the health freak!" He suddenly thought of the posters that he had read only an hour or so ago. "There was actually a poster on health, and one on smoking, in the infirmary. Did you see them?"

"There were? Nah, I didn't see them. I was actually more focused on you, surprisingly enough," Yamamoto bantered back. "You were freaking fainting all over the place!"

"I was _not_," retorted Gokudera. His voice sounded normal, but he was starting to feel a little bit tense about what he was planning to say next. "I was _not_ fucking fainting. But anyways, uhm... did you see _any_ of the posters?"

"I _saw_ them; I just didn't _read_ any of them. So no. Why?"

Gokudera shrugged as he put on a casual act.

"While I was in there, I was looking at the posters cuz I was bored. There was stuff on there like about the immune system and things like that. And one of them was on STD's."

"Well that's just lovely!" exclaimed Yamamoto with a slightly amused laugh. "Tell me, did it come with pictures?" he joked.

"What? No, no it didn't." Gokudera broke out into startled laughter. "Holy fuck, _pictures_?" He was simultaneously taken aback and relieved that Yamamoto was making light of this topic.

When he had calmed down sufficiently, Gokudera tried again. His throat was still a little tight.

"Okay, so anyways, the poster was on STD's and it talked about sex, safe sex, and abstinence and things like that and I was just wondering what you'd make out of it."

"Mhm," Yamamoto leaned back a little and tapped his pen on the table. "Well, obviously STD's aren't pleasant. Like, people joke about them, like I just did, but it's actually all pretty serious stuff. But at the same time, there's no need to freak out about them, like people did with AIDS not so long ago, but they are a real threat."

Gokudera nodded, his head emotionally swirling.

'Damn. When did Yamamoto get so mature about these sorts of things? When he gets serious and buckles down… wow. I bet Tsuna is one of those kids who freak out about this stuff. Hell, even I may have been a bit of a jerk about all this if I hadn't reconsidered it recently.'

He looked hard at the raven athlete. 'But then again, Yamamoto's just matured all around.'

Yamamoto continued giving his reply.

"As for safe sex, considering what I just said, that's definitely important. Like, even when you watch porn, you see the porn stars wearing condoms. But I don't think sex of any sort is too big of a concern at our school. Hardly anyone's dating anyone and the academics are so tough and competitive that I honestly don't think that there's enough time."

Then he shrugged. "But I don't really know what the others do. Half of what I just said is just reciting stuff I learned from Biology." He suddenly laughed. "I remember! Freshman year! The teacher showed my class pictures!"

"No shit? Not _my_ class!"

"Oh, I wish I'd been in your class! Those pictures were _not_ something that I wanted to have happen to me, I can tell you that, and they weren't something that I wanted to even look at either!"

Gokudera blinked and felt a jolt. Of course, he didn't know if he had gotten an STD from the hustler or not, but the thought that Yamamoto maybe wouldn't want to look at him, no matter in what capacity, if he had contracted an STD made something inside of him twinge.

"But what if you were dating someone," he started slowly. "Someone you really liked, and… _she_ had an STD?" Gokudera shook his head to drape his silver bangs over his face. "Protection doesn't prevent the spread of all STD's, you know."

Yamamoto was beginning to get a little uneasy. 'What's up with all the questions?' he wondered. 'Gokudera isn't usually so serious and quiet like this. I wish I knew what was going on inside his head. How would he answer to the questions he's been asking me?'

But despite his internal worries about his friend, Yamamoto tried to focus and do his best to answer the question honestly.

"Someone I really like who has an STD? Uhm…"

Yamamoto, being the happy-go-lucky type of person that he was, had never thought about this sort of situation before and so was feeling quite at a loss. He wondered again what Gokudera's answer to the same question would be and cleared his throat uncertainly before he gave his own answer.

"I'm not really sure, but I think…with a bit of struggle…I would be okay with it. I mean, it'd be tough for sure, especially if it was for long-term, but if I really was committed to the person, then… I'll just have to live with it, you know?"

Gokudera hadn't gotten his bangs out of his face yet.

"But what about sex?" he asked from behind his bangs. "Wouldn't you get frustrated if you couldn't ever go all the way? Lots of couples have broken up because of sex."

"Well, that's why I said the part about long-term and commitment," Yamamoto said. He was speaking slowly, trying to think things out well. "If I weren't committed, then I figure I wouldn't have a lot of trouble breaking up. I'd probably feel a bit guilty, but I'd get over it over time. But if I was committed, then I'd view it as the price I pay to stay in the relationship."

Gokudera was quiet. He was musing over what Yamamoto had said.

'It feels true,' he thought. 'It _can't_ be true; it's not a fact, but it _feels_ true. It feels right. That's what should happen.' After another moment, Gokudera realized that what he felt was simple, unadulterated gratitude.

"Yeah. You're right. Uhm. Yeah. I figure that that's a good way to think."

"So, is that how you'd react?"

Gokudera nodded. He hadn't felt so strongly about anything since the hustler.

"If everything else is there, the feelings and the rest, then yeah. But the problem is, of course, the commitment." He got a revelation. "You know, I just realized something. It's not the person."

"What?"

"It's not the person. It's _you_. What I mean is, you don't get committed to someone because they're really that amazing. I mean, that would make it easier, but the end game is that you stay attached to them because you _work_ to stay with them."

Yamamoto didn't know quite what to say. He felt quite amazed by Gokudera's unexpected revelation. Stunned into silence, he kept quiet and just looked at the boy on the other side of the coffee table.

'Wow, that's deep,' Yamamoto wanted to say. 'That's really true.' But he felt that anything he would say would sound immature compared to what Gokudera said so he just smiled as warmly as he could and marveled.

Gokudera closed his notebook with a thump and started collecting his writing utensils, packing-up his things.

"Well, that's it," he said casually, as though he hadn't had one of the most serious conversations of his life. He took off his reading glasses and put them in his bag. His chest was thrumming but he didn't show it. "I'm done with my homework. You?"

"Me too. Uhm…"

Yamamoto suddenly felt like it would be nice to stay with Gokudera on the living room couch and just sit together peaceably. He thought that the idea of them just sitting together, not saying anything or doing anything, but just being together was something deeply inspiring. They could just sit and let the approaching darkness fall on them.

'But Gokudera might think that just sitting and doing nothing is a bit weird.' he thought. "It might make him uncomfortable or something, and that wouldn't be good.'

He unwillingly proposed something else to do. "Uh, it's a bit early, but do you want to go eat? Miss the six o'clock dinner rush hour and all that."

Gokudera smiled dazzlingly.

"Yeah, let's go," he said, already all packed. He picked up his bag and stood up. "But not anywhere fancy. I have an idea."

* * *

**Again, no one is diabolically planning anything. **

**They're just searching.**

**Review, please.**


	10. Chapter 10

**I don't understand why teenagers have to go through puberty.**

**I mean, is all that mess with the hormones and identity-searching strictly necessary? Is puberty needed to develop into a 'proper' adult? Or is it just life forcing another of it's messed-up rules on those who least want to play the game?**

**I don't know; all I know is that I'm going through it and it's doing a number on me and all of the characters in this story.**

**Hope I portrayed it the way it feels.**

* * *

Yamamoto mutely followed Gokudera as the other boy purposely walked down the street. Gokudera was walking past all their usual repertoire of restaurants, which was a little puzzling, but Yamamoto didn't question it. There was an aura of sanctity that he didn't want to disturb about following his friend's silver head like a lit beacon through the city streets.

"Do you mind if we just eat something really light?" asked Gokudera. His rocker-styled hair was getting a bit mussed in the afternoon winds. "I'm not that hungry and I was just thinking that it'd be nice to go to a street café. Is that alright with you?"

Gokudera glanced at him and Yamamoto nodded, smiling. It did sound nice to go to a street café. The juxtaposition of a daylight place being visited at night was strangely pleasing, the same way that sometimes breakfast at dinnertime was pleasing. Yamamoto figured that the two were directly related.

He felt that something in the air had cleared, or was clearing, as he followed in the wake of his friend's path.

The weather was getting cold, but the slight chill flowing breezily about his head was refreshing. Looking at the way that Gokudera's hair was slightly lifted and borne up by the breeze, glinting with clean light, he wondered if Gokudera felt refreshed as well. Ignoring the sounds of the bustling city, Yamamoto could imagine that the sound of Gokudera's hair being ruffled by the autumn wind was like the sound of vast plains of shining grass rustling with the spring chinook.

"Okay. Here we are!" announced Gokudera, as he stopped in front of a small counter off to the side of the street.

Yamamoto stopped next to him and glanced around the café that was scrunched up off to the side of the street sidewalk. He had never been here before.

Besides the café worker who took orders on the other side, they were the only two at the counter.

The street café was in a slightly less busy and therefore quieter part of the street. There was only a single bare lightbulb dangling from the overhead cover above. The lightbulb was of the type that burned the retinas when directly looked at but which cast a hale, clean emanation below itself over the limits of its light.

There were two plastic stools in front of the counter, but one of them was dented and looked as though it might collapse if sat on. Yamamoto was closest to the one useable stool, but didn't sit on it. He didn't want to do anything that might disrupt the balance between him and Gokudera.

After a moment, Gokudera shucked off his backpack and put it on top of the single available stool, sealing the deal.

The silver-haired rocker looked over the small menu and ordered a sandwich, which Yamamoto seconded. The café worker took their orders and shuffled out of sight.

As he waited, Yamamoto carefully looked up and squinted at the lightbulb. The overhead cover of the café was blocking out most of the wind, but the bulb was still lightly swinging, although its subtle movements weren't perceptible if not observed near point-blank.

'It's like a mini-sun lighting up its own little world,' Yamamoto thought as he looked away, blinking. 'Could this be Gokudera's world?'

He turned to Gokudera, who was leaning on the counter, and phrased his question differently. "Do you come here often?"

The addressed boy shrugged and shook his head, then tossed his silver bangs out of his face.

"No. Just every once in a while."

"I've never been here before."

"I know. That's why I brought you here," Gokudera smiled airily. "I wanted to show you. Try out new things and all that."

Their sandwiches arrived and the two boys took out their wallets and paid for the food before starting to eat their minimalistic dinner. Gokudera leaned his back on the edge of the counter and looked out into the street as he ate. Yamamoto watched him.

There was nothing situationally similar about sitting on a couch in a living room and just breathing, and standing at a counter on a street cafe and eating a makeshift dinner, but Yamamoto felt that somehow those two actions, which were entirely unalike, were connected. It felt like somehow they were in the same category, of the same genre, and in the same mood. It felt like he was getting what he wanted.

The sandwich wasn't all that to his taste, and the monsoon night winds were getting just a bit too fast and cold, and the way that the overhead lightbulb had started noticeably swinging was making him feel just a bit disoriented, but Yamamoto found that the these imperfections were perfectly acceptable.

Gokudera, as he continued leaning back on the counter and staring out into the street, did not seem to notice these imperfections, or if he did, did not seem to allow them to disturb his harmony.

'He looks so… at peace with himself,' thought Yamamoto. 'He looks like he doesn't have a care in the world, but I know he does. He does have problems and things that worry him… but he just knows how to take his mind off them when he needs to.'

Gokudera, still leaning on the counter and looking out into the city, didn't have any clue of what his friend was thinking about him. At the moment, he didn't have any thoughts to muddle up his head. He was feeling the same as he did when he was at the park playground.

The teenage boy just enjoyed the way the cool night air rushed past him, the way his clothes moved slightly with the wind and made him feel free even as he stood still, even the way that the hard edge of the counter cut into his back.

For some reason, he felt like he had achieved something to be satisfied with, and whatever it may be, he did feel satisfied. He had nothing outside of him worth mentioning, but yet his consciousness of his body made him feel sated.

'Is this how the hustler felt as he walked away?' he wondered with a hazy smile. 'With a few bills securely in his pocket and the clothes on his back and a feeling of having earned his living for the night? There must be no worse misery for him than waiting for someone to pick him up, but won't that brief moment of achievement as he walks away be all that more amazing for it?'

Gokudera liked the way that his own physical awareness led him to other sensibilities such as being able to feel the presence of other people. The nerves on his skin were acutely aware and tingling.

He didn't have to look or reach out for Yamamoto to know that he was right there.

'I want to take him to that place in the park. And I want him to be honest about how he feels about it. I don't need him to like it; I just want him to know what that place means to me.'

Then Gokudera pushed away from the counter and put his full weight on his feet alone.

'But how can I possibly explain the significance of that place without telling him what happened there?'

He picked up his backpack and nodded at Yamamoto.

"If you're done, let's go," he said, indicating down the street with a tilt of his head as he shouldered his backpack.

Gokudera glanced towards the park without turning his head. He looked back at his friend. Yamamoto, stepping out into the street with his hands out and open, looked entirely trusting. Gokudera took in that image, memorized it, and looked away.

'Not tonight,' he thought. 'Not tonight. Tonight's a school night. I'll wait for… the weekend.'

The two boys started down the darkening streets. The first street lights were just flickering on around the city.

"Right, then. Where to?" asked Yamamoto.

Gokudera shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. He looked deep into the city and stared unwaveringly straight ahead.

"Nowhere. Let's just go home."

* * *

"G'night, dad," said Yamamoto, stepping out of the bathroom after he had washed.

"Night," waved the dad from his seat in front of the television.

Yamamoto went into his bedroom and closed the door gently. Turning off the room light, he stepped deftly across his room in practiced steps to turn on the lamp by his bed. He stripped, threw his clothes over his desk chair, set his alarm clock, and got into bed. He turned off the bedside lamp.

Sleep did not come easily.

In fact, it didn't take long for Yamamoto to find that he wasn't getting sleepy at all.

After tossing and turning around in his sheets with no sign of falling asleep anytime soon, he decided that he would stop trying to jump to the final result of sleeping and just try to get to the first step of lying down comfortably.

'If I ever live with someone and share my bed, how would I ever get comfortable enough to sleep?' he wondered as he looked up at his bedroom ceiling.

It had turned out that his most comfortable position on his bed, which was single-size, involved lying face-up and having his limbs sprawled all over the place. Yamamoto could not imagine how he could share a bed with anyone, even in the type of large king-size bed that his father had once shared with his late mother, and get comfy enough to sleep well.

'And I know that I move around a lot in my sleep. And dad says that I kick sometimes. And obviously I need my space, so how could I ever sleep with someone?' he questioned. 'If I marry and I _have_ to share my bed, I'll be cranky all the time from sleep-deprivation! But how can I _not_ share my bed when that's conventionally what everyone does?'

The thought of years upon years of troubled sleep was very dismal to Yamamoto. A future of long nights spent awake, staring up at the ceiling and uncomfortably holding a stiff position on his side of the bed seemed a very miserable prospect.

Gokudera's revelation from earlier in the day suddenly popped into his head.

"It's not the person," Gokudera had said. "It's _you_."

Yamamoto thought about his friend's words carefully.

He knew that Gokudera had initially said those words to mean that effort and willpower was needed to maintain affection, to be committed, and that it was ridiculous to blame a broken relationship on the failures of the characteristics or personality of the person.

But Yamamoto also felt that those same words that Gokudera had said were meant and could be interpreted in another way.

'Gokudera's not so naïve or selfless as to believe that the faults of a person can be completely disregarded just due to an effort to ignore them,' he realized. 'He also meant that you need to work to get what you _want_, but _with_ the person, to work out a fair bargain.'

'A relationship,' Yamamoto concluded, 'Is just the coming together of independently self-interested individuals to get the best deal on what they want. The teamwork means that the standard is uniform and that you have to compromise sometimes. That's commitment. But the rest of the time, the teamwork ups the chances of each person attaining their own separate desires.'

Yamamoto could still hear, in his mind, Gokudera saying those powerful words: "It's _you_."

He laid back into his sheets, mentally replaying those words over and over again.

'That means that I don't have to share my bed just because that's what everyone does. I can work out my own thing.'

Seeing beyond the deceptive romanticization and convention of relationships and uncovering the way that things were at their basic core had given Yamamoto a wonderfully relaxed feeling.

'It's funny how things work,' he thought drowsily. 'The blunt, sometimes harsh ways of reality are far more comforting than any of the fantastical things that dreams are made of.'

He fell asleep.

That night, in his dreams, Yamamoto was an older version of himself lying face-up on a bed. His limbs were sprawled everywhere and he was looking up at the ceiling.

It was night, but even in the dark, he could tell that he was in the master bedroom of his current house. But instead of the king-size bed that was in the middle of the actual bedroom, he was on a single-size that was a little off to the side. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that there was another single-size bed that was a few feet away, only separated from his own bed by a bedside cabinet and a lamp.

In his dream, without looking or reaching out, Yamamoto knew that there was someone, someone who was deeply committed to him, on the other bed.

* * *

"Just a few more classes and then it's the weekend! Finally!" exclaimed Gokudera from his seat in the school cafeteria. It was the Friday lunch period and the trio was sitting and eating at their usual table as always.

"Unfortunately, we still have those last classes to go, though," sighed Tsuna. He put down his spoon. "And _then_ it'll be the weekend."

"Ah, don't talk about classes! You guys are ruining my lunch!" joked Yamamoto. "Well, actually, I'm done," he amended, looking down at his clean tray.

"So am I," said Gokudera. "Tsuna, you?"

"Yeah, me too."

"Okay, then!" said Gokudera, standing up and tossing his head to clear his dark-colored bangs. "C'mon."

The three boys put away their trays and automatically made their way to the football field as they always did during the lunchtime free activity period. They went up the cement steps and sat on the bleachers on the side of the field. The other boys in the surrounding area were playing football, just messing around with a random ball, or smoking in the far corner.

"They're lucky that it's so windy," commented Yamamoto as he looked at the smokers. "The teachers won't see the smoke."

Gokudera tossed his head. Even though the bleacher area had an overhead cover that blocked out most of the winds that swept down from above, the occasional wisp of wind kept on blowing his bangs into his face. Then he rolled his eyes and shrugged.

"It doesn't matter if the smoke is visible or not. The teachers know; they've always known. They just don't do anything about it until they have to; until they can't ignore it and it's right in front of their faces."

He gestured towards the smokers. "_They're_ actually doing the teachers a favor by being over there, because then they're at least pretending to hide the fact that they smoke every activity period."

"Why smoke at all, though? It makes your breath stink!" Tsuna wrinkled his nose.

Gokudera shrugged. "Don't ask me; I've half a mind to go join them," he said. Yamamoto gave him a rather unhappy look. "But it costs too much," he added quickly.

One of the football players scored a goal and cheered at himself as the goalkeeper, who was flat on the ground from his attempt at blocking, laughed and cussed. One of the boys in the defense position took the ball out of the net and kicked it back into play.

Gokudera thought about the teachers who didn't dare go outside the school building to avoid the obligation of stopping the smokers. It was a little pathetic how they did so, but Gokudera thought that their behavior was understandable.

'Well, why should the teachers stop them?' he thought as he looked at the smokers. 'Let them do what they want. The teachers don't have to – and they shouldn't have to – go out of their way.'

"You know, if I ever do drugs," Gokudera said as he continued looking far out into the field. "I'll do the shooting-up kind that you put in with a syringe. The problem is, though, that those drugs are usually the harder type and I don't want to get addicted. But anyways, I won't be doing drugs anytime soon, if ever."

"Yeah, I don't think that doing drugs is such a brilliant idea," said Yamamoto, kicking his feet and scuffing his shoes on the cement steps. "You know that drug needles are notorious for being contaminated, right?"

"You know that baseball players are notorious for using steroids, right?" shot back Gokudera, poking Yamamoto and grinning.

They had just started a play-wrestling match when some other junior boys walked over to the bleachers. Gokudera and Yamamoto stopped horsing around when their peers walked up the bleacher steps and smiled briefly in greeting. Tsuna waved at the newcomers.

"What's up?" the trio asked.

"Nuttin' much," the others replied as they sat around on the bleachers.

One of the boys that had just arrived reached into his jacket pocket and excitedly took out a couple of glossy pieces of paper. "Hey, d'you want to buy some pictures?"

"What pictures?" asked Yamamoto. The gloss of the pictures created a glare that prevented him from seeing what the image was even though he was only a couple of meters away.

"Have a look," said the boy, holding out the pictures.

Yamamoto took the pictures and held them so that Gokudera and Tsuna could see them as well. The images were of female celebrities, all of them with long brown hair and bright smiles. The women in the pictures were all wearing low-cut, rather short and skimpy dresses.

Gokudera shrugged, unaffected and unimpressed.

"So what're we supposed to do with them?" he asked.

Yamamoto and Tsuna looked at the boy who had distributed the pictures with questioning and confused looks.

"Well, if you like them, you can buy them," said the boy. "I'm selling them for a fiver each."

"Five dollars! You're kidding me!" exclaimed Gokudera, hastily taking one of the pictures out of Yamamoto's hand and pushing it back at the boy. "And why would I want to buy pictures?"

"C'mon! They're fun to look at!" said the boy, taking the picture back and waving it around. "You can't get these images anywhere else! Okay, I'll lower the price. How about three dollars?"

Gokudera was getting the sneaking suspicion that the boy had handed out the pictures as images to masturbate to, by his telling allegation that they were 'fun to look at.'

'Even if I jerked-off to pictures, I wouldn't jerk off to these girls anyway. Or girls in general,' he thought. He shook his head at the boy and slid a bit further back on the bleachers.

Yamamoto, trying to be nice, apologetically smiled before he slid the rest of the pictures back at the boy. The boy took them and put them carefully back in his jacket pocket with a small sigh.

"Come on guys," the boy said, and the group of boys stepped down from the bleachers. "See you later," the group called at the trio as its members walked out into the football field.

Yamamoto turned to Gokudera. "What was that about?"

"I think that those were supposed to be wank pictures," Gokudera told him honestly. "Terrible ones, though."

"Wank pictures?" said Yamamoto, sounding a little surprised. "Really?"

"Why would we buy those pictures from him when we have the internet?" asked Tsuna.

"See, you're smart, Tsuna," said Gokudera approvingly. "I don't know what he was thinking. I mean, who jerks off to pictures anyways?" He shrugged. "Don't get me wrong, but I figure that if you're going to, like, explore your sexuality, you might as well go hard out while you're at it, you know?"

As soon as he heard his own words and understood what he himself had just said, Gokudera sucked in a quick breath and held it. He had slipped and almost been a little too open. His stomach clenched and his recently heightened sensitivity level spiked in panic.

'What the _fuck_ do you mean, 'you know'?' he angrily berated himself in his unstable mentality. 'You'd better fucking hope it's _not_ 'you know'! Why don't you just shout off the rooftops that you used the hustler, you idiot? What are you even saying?'

Fortunately, though Gokudera had gone berserk internally, his outside physical form had immobilized in shock and his troubled emotions did not show on his face. Because of his outward stoicalness, neither one of his two friends realized that anything was off with either Gokudera's comment or Gokudera himself. In fact, oblivious to anything being wrong, they continued the thread of conversation in a supportive manner.

"I think I know what you mean," said Tsuna in agreement. "If you know what you want, you should go for it, definitely. But… I get that some people need to be eased into things, start soft-core before they get to hard-core and all that."

Yamamoto nodded and smiled at Gokudera. "I hardly think that everyone is so assertive about what they want, like you are."

Gokudera had stilled. His brief flame of passion had frozen.

'So assertive about what they want…like _I am…_?'

Gokudera's head started buzzing. He felt slightly numb, like he was running in reverse, unsure of what he should be feeling. He could not understand how he had ever managed to give anyone the impression that he was sure enough about himself to know what he wanted, let alone be assertive about it.

Sitting on the field bleachers, under the shade of the overhead cover, Gokudera thought of the countless nights that he had spent at the park playground, sitting in the night darkness. He looked to the far side of the field where the smokers were.

He was on the swings, staring blankly into the park and further back into the city. The regular smokers surrounded him, making the immediate air around them hazy before the winds swept the smoke away. Their lit cigarettes, glowing pinpricks, burned into the night like bright eyes. His silver bangs moved with the wind, swirling gently about his face like a veil.

'No, I'm just the guy that sits and waits for what he wants to come to him. I don't take the initiative. That's not being assertive,' Gokudera said to himself, a little unhappily.

Gokudera thought of the teachers who avoided the school smokers.

'I'm like them. I don't do anything until I have to, until I can't ignore it and it's right in front of me. I don't go out of my way to get what I want. I just put myself out there and wait for a sign.'

The field in front of Gokudera transformed into grey cement streets and the bleachers on the other side became the bus terminal. Gokudera looked hard at the other side, far into his vision.

The hustler had appeared at the bus sign, waiting for clients with his gorgeous hair and wonderful body and beautiful everything. He had taken him to the heartland of the park; had wordlessly come and wordlessly left; had asked him, "What do you want, kid?" with a smile and stripped off his clothes.

'I know what I want when I see it,' thought Gokudera. 'And when I see it, I take it. Is that being assertive?'

He looked away from the imagined hustler on the other side of the field at the very real Yamamoto that was next to him.

"Assertive? Me?" Gokudera laughed tersely. "Yeah…maybe. Yeah."

* * *

**I think going through puberty is that you make discoveries that you weren't searching for.**

**And I think, that given time, you begin to appreciate most of the things you find. But you have to have found them yourself.**

**If this story's writer was Gokudera, he wouldn't know what to do with all the positive comments he's been getting in his inbox. **

**I don't know either. It's sort of a numb, surprised, pleased, and panicked feeling that I get whenever I read a review. **

**People keep telling me that my story is 'weird' (in a good way), 'real,' or 'human.' You know who you are. And thank you so much. I've never been so happy to be associated with the term 'weird.'**

**Really. I hope I won't let you down.**

**Review, please.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Tried to delve into a couple of different aspects in this chapter.**

**I hope it didn't get chaotic; It's not, in my opinion.**

**But who knows what you think.**

* * *

"You gonna stay or should we catch you later?" Yamamoto asked Tsuna.

Classes had ended and the trio was gathered around Tsuna's locker, waiting for him to pack-up and make his decision.

Gokudera and Yamamoto, being on the archery squad and the baseball team, had after-school practice. Tsuna sometimes stayed and watched one or both of their practices, but the practices lasted for quite a period of time and were not extremely engaging to watch for two hours at a stretch.

"We'll call and meet up with you after practice," said Gokudera when he saw Tsuna smile apologetically and nod his head towards the school gates.

"See you in a bit!" the two athletes called as Tsuna shouldered his backpack and started making his way off school grounds.

Once Tsuna left, they went to the basement floor where the indoor gym and boys' locker room were, changed quickly, and went out through the heavy glass doors of the building to the archery field and the baseball field respectively.

Because the sports season was drawing to an end, the number of games, matches, and competitions were due to increase near exponentially in a couple of weeks. To prepare for this onslaught of competitive sport, and considering that the last couple of games had been lost, all the coaches were training their teams harder than ever.

The archery field and the baseball field were quite close together, but there was a school building directly between them that prevented one from seeing the activities of the other. However, Yamamoto got a chance to see how the archery squad was doing with their practice when the baseball coach ordered the team to go on a campus run as part of their warm-up.

Running faster than the other team members and pushing his way to the front as he nearly always did, Yamamoto circled around the school buildings on the assigned route. When he heard some of the boys behind him start to catch up, he strained his legs to pick up the pace so he could maintain the lead.

The archery field was near the end of the cross-campus running route and on a slightly elevated level than the rest of the school grounds. Breathing hard by this point, Yamamoto went up the slow incline and looked for Gokudera as he started going around the field.

Compared to the baseball team, the archery squad was going about their warm-up in a leisurely fashion: the slowest of them and the late-comers were just finishing up their mild jog and the rest of them were stretching or setting up the equipment. Yamamoto glanced to his side into the archery field every couple of seconds as he ran.

Gokudera was busily drawing chalk lines on the sandy ground for shooting aisles. When he drew the lines slightly off, his spotter called out to him and he scuffed out part of the chalk with his shoe and shifted his angle a little before resuming what he was doing. The way he had his head tilted as he walked with the chalk-dust applicator made him appear careless to the casual onlooker, but Yamamoto knew him and knew that he must be concentrating quite hard on his assigned task.

Yamamoto wished that Gokudera would turn and face his way so he could wave at him.

But Gokudera was completely engaged on his task, staring intently at the ground, and unaware that he was being watched.

Footsteps immediately behind the distracted baseball athlete alerted him that his position as lead was being challenged. There was only a short distance between where he was now and his return destination of the baseball field. Yamamoto took one last glance at Gokudera, who was still not looking his way, and broke into a sprint.

Reaching the baseball field first, Gokudera began walking around it to cool down from his run. The other baseball team members trickled in and joined him in walking around the field. When they had all cooled-down enough, they got into a rough circle and stretched.

As the coach set up the drills, Yamamoto was still thinking about the way Gokudera's profile had looked and how the other boy hadn't turned to look at him.

* * *

Gokudera silently waited for Yamamoto outside the locker room.

Archery practice had ended slightly early and Gokudera had already changed and rapidly gotten ready to go by the time that the baseball players had ended their practice. His bag at his feet, he impatiently stood between the vending machine and the closed glass doors of the building, alternating his raw gaze from the hallway boys haggling for change to buy drinks and the world outside the doors.

The silver-haired boy looked out and up through the clear doors of the gym floor. The sky was already beginning to darken, and although he couldn't see it, he knew that the sun was setting. From the way that the trees and bushes directly outside were swaying, the wind outside seemed to have gotten stronger. Gokudera looked back at the vending machine and restlessly pushed his bag around the floor with his foot.

The wind – it was causing loose dry leaves to swirl around on the sidewalk outside and whenever someone went in or out, irritatingly making the door swing wildly and making him feel cold in the process, bits of trash and dust on the floor migrated further and further away down the hallways. The wind had continuously blown his hair into his face ever since the monsoon season had started.

And although Gokudera knew that it was mostly his failings, which was why he wanted to kick the vending machine until the plastic front broke and all the drinks spilled out, the wind had played a part in shooting his aim all to pieces that practice. He sullenly watched the other boys who were still rummaging in their pockets for coins.

Yamamoto came out of the locker room, swinging his sports bag from the strap on one hand. He had only changed his athletic shorts for jeans and had on an unzipped hoodie over his sweaty t-shirt. Gokudera picked up his bag and put one hand on the door when he saw Yamamoto approaching.

"How was practice?" Yamamoto asked as he went down the hallway.

Gokudera pushed out the door just before Yamamoto reached him. "Terrible."

The door swung back and Yamamoto stopped it before it could hit him in the face. The glass door met the heel of his hand with a dull clang and vibrated violently with the shock.

"Oh."

Yamamoto caught up with his friend, who was obviously feeling down, and mutely walked beside him until they were past the school gates and at a road crossing. The cross-walk light was red, and they stopped in front of the rushing cars on the street, giving Yamamoto a chance to try to get Gokudera to feel a bit better.

"Uhm," Yamamoto glanced at Gokudera and shifted the shoulder strap of his bag. "I'm sorry about your practice. Why was it so terrible?"

"Just…!" Gokudera burst out after a pause, then abruptly cut himself off.

He wanted to say a lot of things, including "Because I'm shit at shooting," "I don't know," "The wind," and "Shut up!" but he hadn't completely lost his mind because he was frustrated so he snapped his mouth closed. He glared at the pedestrian streetlight that was still red on the opposite side of the road.

Finally, he said, "It just was, okay? I just had a bad day."

"Oh. Well… it happens," said Yamamoto lamely. His dejection at Gokudera's refusal to explain was only slightly mitigated that Gokudera had given him any sort of answer at all.

Gokudera nodded curtly, still staring resolutely across the road and away from him. His jaw was set and his head rigidly straight. The intensity that his look held, even if it was seen only in profile, reminded Yamamoto of the way that Gokudera had looked at the very beginning of practice. Gokudera hadn't looked at him then, either.

Yamamoto didn't particularly have confidence in his ability for witty conversation, but he didn't like the disconcerting silence and so tried to think of something to say.

"Uhm," he began awkwardly. "I saw you during practice."

Gokudera jerked his head a few degrees towards him. "You did?" It sounded like a statement and his voice was cutting, but with an undertone of anxiety.

The green light came on and they started walking across the road, Gokudera with his head partly turned towards him but still not directly at him as he normally did.

"Oh no, actually not during," Yamamoto quickly amended. In his damp shirt, the winds in the dropping afternoon temperature felt biting. "It was at the very start. When you guys were just warming up. We ran by your field."

Gokudera blinked hard and turned his cheek back away. "What was I doing?"

"Setting up the aisle lines, I think. I was gonna wave, but you were busy, so…" he shrugged as a means of apology.

"Oh. I see." Gokudera shrugged as well. It felt like a dismissive gesture.

Yamamoto was quiet for a moment. His damp clothes were beginning to really chill him as he walked against the wind on the rushing street. He glanced at the brooding boy walking next to him at his right. Gokudera's chin was cut at a rather sharp angle, his ears poked out of his short rocker hair, his stance was set, and his eyes were fixed forward.

"You know," Yamamoto said, glancing away and switching his bag strap from his right shoulder to his left. "It's funny when you look at someone and they don't look at you."

Gokudera hadn't reacted in any way to his words, but Yamamoto knew that he was listening.

"Like, in the subway, you usually can't look anywhere without looking at some stranger, and most of the time, the person you're looking at doesn't even know that you're looking at them. Of course, you get those people who just stare off into space and a person just happens to be there, you know, but I don't do that. I don't really know where to look on subways."

The silver-haired boy next to him didn't look at him, but tossed his head and hooked his thumbs in his pockets.

"When I ride the subway, I play this game," Gokudera suddenly said, startling and relieving Yamamoto at the same time.

Gokudera still hadn't turned his head to look at Yamamoto as he normally did when he spoke to him, and it was almost like he was speaking out into the street. But his voice was slightly less hard than before and his stance was a little less stiff.

"When I'm holding on to a hand-strap and there's someone on the seat in front of me, I look at what they're doing," he said quietly. "The thing is, sometimes they look up. So the game is that I have to look away before they catch me looking."

Yamamoto smiled tentatively, slightly wary of Gokudera's moody temperament but interested in what he was saying. "Have you ever been caught?"

Gokudera grinned briefly. "Sure."

"What happened?"

"Well, at first I just looked away really fast after they caught me, but then I figured that if they were already going to know that I'd been looking at them, I might as well own up to it, you know? Hold my ground. So now I don't do anything. I just keep looking."

"And they don't say anything?" Yamamoto was fascinated.

Gokudera shook his head. "No. I look at them and they look at me and we both realize that it's just looking, not like stalking or anything, and it's fine."

"It's not awkward?"

Gokudera shook his head again. Then he paused, as though on second thought, and did a one-shoulder shrug. "For me, it's not. For them, I don't know. Maybe. But I don't think so."

Yamamoto nodded thoughtfully for a moment. Now that he reconsidered it, there was no reason why simply looking at someone should be thought of as such a big deal. Looking at a stranger wasn't visual assault – it was just… looking.

After a slight hesitation, Yamamoto asked, "And have you ever caught anyone looking at you?"

"I don't know." Gokudera suddenly grinned and held it. "I've thought I'd seen people, on the street and the like, looking at me, but that they looked away just when I looked at them. But maybe I'm just delusional."

They were now at a cross-road. Although Gokudera hardly ever sweated during his practices, which involved more technical skill than physical strength, Yamamoto did and would have to go to his house to take a shower. Gokudera had the choice of either going with Yamamoto and waiting for him to wash up before going to Tsuna's house together, or immediately going to Tsuna's. As Gokudera deliberated his choices, Yamamoto looked at him, hoping.

Gokudera tilted his head towards his choice and he and Yamamoto started off together to Yamamoto's place.

"How would you feel if I played the game on you?" Yamamoto wanted to ask as they walked. "Would you still not feel awkward?"

He realized that he had constantly been playing the game on Gokudera the whole day and wondered if Gokudera ever played the game on him. Yamamoto wondered if he got caught, if he would keep holding his gaze as coolly as Gokudera no doubt did with his subway subjects.

"You know," said Gokudera. He had his turned his head and was smiling at Yamamoto. "I think face-to-face looking is entirely overrated."

Yamamoto glanced at Gokudera. Gokudera's look was neither dull nor piercing, a look that showed that there was an astutely thinking mind behind the dark eyes, but not a mind that could read thoughts. Yamamoto glanced away briefly and then back again.

"What do you mean?"

"Like in chick flicks. There's always this couple who looks at each other like this," Gokudera said, slowing his walk and stopping. He took Yamamoto's head and held it to his own so that there was only a hand's breath between their faces.

After an instant, he let go.

"It's supposed to be all romantic or whatever," Gokudera continued, as he started walking again. "But I think that's bullshit."

Yamamoto had resumed walking beside Gokudera, and he appeared casual, but he felt anything but. He was having a bit of trouble processing the scantiness of the distance that had between him and Gokudera not two seconds ago.

"Uhm, why?" were the first words that came to his stunned mind and he said them.

"If you know you're being looked at," answered Gokudera as though it was quite evident, "then you automatically adjust your behavior to be more "acceptable" or "conventional" or whatever," he said, using his crooked fingers as mimed quotation marks. "And if you're face-to-face, then of _course_ you know you're being looked at, and up close at that. So you'd be more conscious about how you look."

"Aren't you, uhm, supposed to be really comfortable, like… just let yourself go and be yourself, with someone you're, well, with?" Yamamoto asked a little embarrassedly, clutching his bag strap with both hands.

Gokudera laughed, genuinely amused. "Are you a romanticist?" he asked in a teasing and almost delighted voice. "What world do you live in?"

Yamamoto laughed as well. He wasn't exactly sure what Gokudera was laughing about, but Gokudera's laugh sounded clean and real and honest, a laugh that he wanted to join in with, a laugh that he wanted to be a part of. But at the same time that Yamamoto let out his own laugh, he felt a slight but strong need running its undercurrent course inside of him.

'What world do _you_ live in, Gokudera?' he wondered with a touch of desperation. 'Because it's certainly not the same one that everyone else lives in.'

"Look, maybe I'm wrong," Gokudera said, calming his laughter and oblivious to Yamamoto's thoughts. "But I've always thought that people constantly change their portrayal when they're with other people. You know, pretending to be attentive when the teacher's around, pretending that you care when someone's saying something boring, and just generally setting up an image of being a respectable or cool person."

Yamamoto was still thinking to himself. "You think?" he asked, feeling just the tiny bit lost. He hadn't gotten the impression that Gokudera had set up any sort of image when they had been face-to-face.

"Yeah." Gokudera held his bangs in place with his free hand when a particularly strong wind blew.

"Now, I'm the type who doesn't give too much of a damn about this sort of thing. It's why I sometimes come across as rude or impolite," Gokudera said, shrugging and making a slightly apologetic face, "But the way I see it, I barely know myself; I don't need to make it harder by pretending to be what I'm not."

The wind stopped blowing quite as hard and Gokudera put down his hand. "But I'm sure that I unconsciously adjust my behavior, though. I mean, I'm human."

"But would you say," Yamamoto started. He himself was not entirely sure how he would finish his question. He was feeling that slight touch of desperation again, but he felt like he now understood Gokudera a tiny bit better. "Would you say that you're honest?"

"What I mean to ask is," he hastily but carefully reiterated his vague question, "Do you think that you ever… _consciously_ adjust your behavior to be something different? Like what you said, setting up a certain portrayal of yourself that's maybe not quite _you_?"

Gokudera considered Yamamoto's question.

And immediately thought of the hustler.

The hustler, that beautiful male hustler who still came into his mind regularly, was his one great secret. But did that secret mean something integral to himself; did someone have to be privy to that incident in the park to know who he really was? Did it affect him, his personality? It had changed his view of the world, yes, but so what? How did he know that the hustler hadn't simply awakened something that had already been there and lying dormant within him? Did he have to make an effort to spit out all his secrets in order to show his real self, or was it enough that he casually went about his life without making up unnecessary lies?

"No. I don't," he wanted to say. He fiercely wished it were true.

Then Gokudera thought of archery practice. Yes, he had been upset, and he had made no specific attempt to hide it. But it was a fact that he had kept himself from lashing out at Yamamoto irrationally; had tried to keep his mind and not let out his anger at an innocent target that just happened to be in his vicinity. So he had restrained himself purposely. Was that setting up a false image?

It all depended on what he understood to be his identity. Did his core self involve all the little details about his life?

"…No," he said finally, looking straight down the street. He wasn't sure, but if he had ever set up a certain portrayal of himself, if he had ever created an image for the benefit of those around him, he felt that even his deception must have been a sincere part of him. Maybe he was deluded, but he felt like he had always been himself and nothing else.

"No. I don't."

* * *

Gokudera left his bag just inside the front door and waited in the living room as Yamamoto took his shower in the bathroom that was connected to the master bedroom. Even through the closed doors of the bathroom and of the bedroom, the sound of running water could be faintly heard.

As Yamamoto shampooed his hair he suddenly remembered the dream that he had had the last night.

He could imagine, on the other side of the bathroom wall that he was facing, two single-size beds like he had seen in his dream.

'I'm glad that I didn't look at whoever was on the other bed,' he thought. 'In a way, it's far more… intense that way. A type of trust, maybe, that lets you know that you're not alone without having to have proof about it.'

He started absentmindedly playing with his soapy hair.

'But you also need a certain confidence in yourself to get to that level of trust in another person. You need to be comfortable with being by yourself, be self-assured in being alone. It's like… looking at someone who's not looking at you. You need to be sure of yourself to hold a gaze without reciprocation, but if you're bold enough, it's almost better than having reciprocation because you can just look to your heart's content without worrying about what the other person's thinking about you.'

Yamamoto thought of how he had looked at Gokudera when Gokudera had been intently looking at the ground or down the street. He hadn't felt any awkwardness in his one-way staring contest, but he wondered if he would if the other boy had looked back. If Gokudera did, would he play the game? Or would he bend the rules and hold his gaze as Gokudera would?

Yamamoto closed his eyes and started rinsing his hair.

'When the looking is one-way, you know that at least one person is being completely honest with their portrayal. I'm… glad that Gokudera didn't turn his head to look at me when I ran by him at practice.'

The water running down Yamamoto's back felt like the bedsheets that he had laid on in his dream. He was flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, lying awake in the dark. In his peripheral vision, he could just see the lamp and he felt around gingerly with his hand until he managed to turn it on. His eyes were still fixed on the ceiling. The bedside lamp's glow was like the light of the lone lightbulb at the street café that Gokudera had shown him.

Perhaps it was the hot water that was making his blood surge, but Yamamoto felt himself getting aroused. His body was completely relaxed and if it had been any other time, he would have touched himself without a thought. Having jerked out a quick one in the shower numerous times before, he knew from experience how completely awesome it felt.

But he also knew, that walls or no walls, Gokudera was approximately only ten meters away and it would be extremely awkward, not to mention rather rude, to masturbate with his friend just in the other room.

Yamamoto opened his eyes and turned the water up cold.

* * *

Having dried himself and put on clean clothes, Yamamoto opened the door of the master bedroom and stepped out into the living room where Gokudera was.

Because Yamamoto took quick showers, Gokudera had just been standing around in the living room as he waited. When Yamamoto came out the door, Gokudera was looking out the open apartment window with both hands resting on either side of the sill. He was letting the wind blow through his hair.

The silver-haired boy had his back turned to the bedroom door where Yamamoto was standing, but Yamamoto could tell that he had his eyes closed and was smiling softly to no one in particular but himself. Yamamoto knew, from having caught a glimpse of Gokudera's dark temper just a few minutes ago, as well as Gokudera's shooting a couple of days ago, that Gokudera was no pushover either mentally or physically. The boy at the window could not be said to have a big personality, but he had a sharp one with many intense facets like a well-cut diamond.

'It's like he wasn't even upset a little bit ago,' Yamamoto thought, with amazement.

Running his hands through his drying hair, he realized that he was being treated to another display of Gokudera's ability to throw unwanted things out of his mind at will. The freshly washed boy walked into the living room, feeling somehow strangely that he had cleaned himself in order to approach the boy at the window.

Gokudera heard the footsteps and turned around, opening his eyes. "Oh, you're done," he said, stepping away from the window and putting his hand to his pocket. "Should I call Tsuna, or are you?"

Yamamoto nodded at the boy in front of him and Gokudera pulled out his phone. He made the call.

"At the street corner? The usual, then. Okay, see you there."

Gokudera ended the call with Tsuna and started walking towards the front door. He picked up his bag and held the door open for Yamamoto, who followed his friend through the city to the designated meeting place.

* * *

**All of Gokudera's questions are mine. **

**In fact, he's me, which is why this story is so... interesting for me to write.**

**Are his questions about identity your questions as well?**

**(btw, I actually play the 'subway game.')**

**Review, please.**


	12. Chapter 12

**I feel like this is my finest chapter so far. **

**I tried to write lyrically about realism.**

**Hope you think it's alright.**

* * *

"Did you guys have anything to do in mind?" Yamamoto asked when the three met at the corner of the street.

Gokudera shrugged and Tsuna shook his head.

"I hadn't thought of anything either."

The three stood around for another dull moment before Tsuna made a suggestion.

"Hey, why don't we take the metro and go to the downtown area and just look around? That's generally where all the good places are, so we can just walk around and see what we can find!"

Tsuna's suggestion being an agreeable one, the three went down the nearest subway opening.

Getting on the metro train, Tsuna grabbed the bar near the doors and looked out the window while Yamamoto tried to just keep balance without holding anything. He watched Gokudera, who was characteristically holding onto a hand-strap and calmly watching the man seated in front of him, playing his subway game.

Gokudera, perhaps feeling Yamamoto's eyes on him, turned his head and grinned, knowing that the other boy would know that he was playing the game. They looked at the same man together. The slightly balding man was wearing semi-formal clothes and was watching a sit-com on his phone. When he shifted in his seat and glanced up to see what stop the train was at, Gokudera and Yamamoto quickly looked at each other and laughed.

* * *

In about a quarter of an hour, their metro train reached their stop in the heart of the downtown area, so the trio got off and climbed out of one of the exits and up into the new streets.

The three, feeling the combination of fatigue and relaxed leisure that only came with Friday night and exploration, slowly ambled down the new part of the city, looking at the various colorful signs on both sides of the wide street. The streetlights that were positioned every so often on the sidewalks were hardly necessary even as it was getting dark because the shop signs were so bright. The shops and restaurants were all stuck together like matchboxes, struggling to advertise themselves into greater profit and push each other out.

After a minute or so, they came across one section on the street that was not gaudily lit. It was separate, its own building, and the wide front of the establishment looked to be made of black mirrored glass. Besides a thin light that shone across in a line from the top of the first floor, there were no lights. Looking up, Gokudera saw that the panels of black glass extended to at least the fifth floor. There were no windows.

Although he kept with his friends and didn't pause or stop, Gokudera continued looking at the building curiously as he walked. He had the feeling that the strange establishment had more floors, perhaps even more than were on top the ground floor, underground.

The line of light thickened in the direct middle where the double doors were. The doors looked like they were made of the same substance as the walls, except darker and more opaque. It was slightly less reflective. Gokudera would have thought that the doors were entirely made out of obsidian or highly buffed onyx, if he didn't know that the very idea of doors made out of pure heavy semiprecious rock was absurd, or at least too ridiculously expensive to be reasonable on any normal standards.

There was a complicated graphic design on the double doors, split symmetrically down the middle where the doors met. The design, which Gokudera assumed was the logo of the establishment, was gold-colored, as were the door handles.

Yamamoto saw him turning his head to look at the black glossy building as he walked, and looked back at the building as well. After a moment, he let out a quick laugh of recognition.

"Oh, I think that's the club that everyone at our school goes to!" he said excitedly, exaggerating and pointing over his shoulder at the black building.

Tsuna stopped and turned around to look at it. "That's a _club_?" he asked, looking amazed.

"That's what I was thinking!" exclaimed Gokudera, stopping next to Tsuna in the middle of the sidewalk. "It doesn't look like my idea of a club at all! I thought that place was some sort of swanky hotel for drug lords!"

"Hotel for drug– What?" Yamamoto yelped loudly, doubling over in laughter. "No, it's just a club!"

"Just a club _my ass_!" said Gokudera just as loudly. "That place looks _insane_!"

"How do you know about that club?" asked Tsuna, looking curious and turning to Yamamoto.

Gokudera turned to Yamamoto as well, equally curious.

"Oh, one of the seniors on my baseball team," explained the resident baseball player. "Apparently he goes there from time to time. A lot of the boys in our grade go clubbing there too. And a few of the sophomores."

"I knew that about half the boys in our grade go clubbing, but I thought they went to smaller, more modest places, not like that _thing_ over there!" Gokudera said, gesturing wildly at the building.

"Well, that's where apparently all our school people go when they go clubbing." Yamamoto shrugged.

"Shit. _I_ wouldn't want to go there," said Gokudera, cussing as he always did when he got excited and decidedly turning his back on the club.

"It _does_ look pretty intense," commented Tsuna. "It costs money to even go inside there, I bet," he said astutely.

"It does," confirmed Yamamoto. "You have to have a club membership or something. Just the rich kids go there and even they can't go all that often. It's quite expensive."

"_Looks_ like it!" Gokudera practically yelled. "The door looks like it's made out of freaking obsidian or something! And do you know how much hard alcohol costs?"

Yamamoto snickered and put his arm around Gokudera. "And how do _you_ know how much hard alcohol costs?" he teased.

"You know I don't drink," retorted Gokudera indignantly, shooting a glare at Yamamoto, who was very close to him. "I'll get terrible migraines! But I get around, okay?" He shook his head ruefully and resumed walking down the sidewalk, slipping out from under the other boy's arm.

Yamamoto laughed and followed after him, as did Tsuna.

"So do you think you'll never go clubbing?" Yamamoto asked.

"No, I'll go clubbing. But when I'm in college. Not _now_. And not _there_," Gokudera said scathingly, obviously having a low opinion of the expensive club that they had just passed. "I'm going to go to clubs that are actually _normal_."

'Well, as normal as a gay club can be anyway,' he thought, putting his hands in his pockets.

"And," he added, "I'm not going to drink."

"But then what are you going to do at a club if you don't drink?" Tsuna asked. It was a valid question and Yamamoto nodded, seconding it.

"I'll just dance." Gokudera shrugged. "And flirt."

Yamamoto tried to imagine Gokudera at a club. Perhaps because he was used to seeing Gokudera in a position in which he was comfortable, even enjoying, being alone, such as the time just that very day when the silver-haired boy had been looking out the window of his living room, the image of Gokudera out on the dance floor by himself came easily to Yamamoto's mind.

It took no effort for Yamamoto to be able to see Gokudera being the first person for the night bold enough to start dancing, sauntering into the middle of the empty dance-floor with closed eyes and a small smile and without having taken a single shot. Slowly, the others around the room would put down their drinks and join him in small groups. Yamamoto wanted to think that if he was in the club with Gokudera but didn't know him, he would be among the first to join him on the dance-floor.

But if it was easy to imagine Gokudera dancing, it was not so easy to think of him flirting. Yamamoto looked at the image that he had created in his mind. Gokudera was sitting at a bar counter and offering to buy some girl a drink. Nothing about the picture seemed right.

"Uhm, how would you flirt?" Yamamoto asked.

Gokudera smiled. "How hard is it to pick someone up? I think that if you're even halfway friendly to someone in a club, that counts as flirting. Or I can just ask someone to dance with me."

"I think I'd be too nervous to actively flirt in a club," said Tsuna, giggling.

"Oh, I'd be nervous too, but I have to–" Gokudera cut himself off for the second time that day. His whole body flushed with a sudden rush of adrenaline.

'Fuck, I almost just said that I have to flirt in clubs if I want to get a boyfriend,' he thought in a state of shock. Unlike with his previous speech mishap, he didn't even have the energy to panic, as this time he was too internally drained at the thought of the disastrous outcome that could have resulted if he had finished his sentence.

"You _have_ to flirt?" Yamamoto laughed a little in disbelief. "What?"

"No no no no…," murmured Gokudera absentmindedly, his voice low, his mind frozen. "I just meant that I want to."

"Since when did you want to flirt? I thought you said that you weren't interested in any girls at the moment?" Tsuna piped up.

"That's the _point_," Gokudera snapped.

His head was spinning and he could feel a migraine developing. Gokudera knew that it was unreasonable to snap at his friends about girls when they didn't know that he liked boys, but he couldn't help feeling affronted and at that moment, with his migraine worsening, he didn't give a damn.

With his horrible day and overexciting week, he should have known beforehand that his stress would build up and give him a bitch of a migraine. Gokudera put a hand to his throbbing temple, feeling more frustrated than ever.

"Shit, my head hurts," he muttered.

Getting over his slight surprise that Gokudera had suddenly snapped at him for no reason that he could discern, Tsuna nodded his head sympathetically. The trio were used to Jaime's sudden migraines, which, when mild, made him wince at bright lights and loud noises, and when severe, caused him to get sick and violently throw up.

"Do you have any painkillers on you? In your bag, maybe?" he asked kindly.

Gokudera rummaged around in the pockets of his bag until he found the small bottle of Advil he nearly always carried around.

He held up the bottle. "Yeah. I do."

"C'mon, let's just go to any restaurant," said Yamamoto, putting an arm around Gokudera and leading him to the nearest one that he saw. "He needs something to drink so he can take his pills."

* * *

Yamamoto and Tsuna finished up their early dinners on one side of the table while Gokudera scrunched up his eyes and clutched his head in the bench opposite them as he had for the past hour. They spoke in hushed tones, not wanting to make undue noise that would make their friend's head twinge in more pain.

"Do you think he's feeling any better?" Tsuna whispered to Yamamoto.

"I don't know. D'you reckon we should go home?" Yamamoto whispered back.

"No, we _shouldn't_," said Gokudera, a little harshly. His voice had gone husky with stress. "I'll be fine. Just give the Advil a minute to work."

Tsuna and Yamamoto looked at each other doubtfully. An hour was more than enough time for the Advil to work, and it didn't seem to have had any effect. It was rare that painkillers ever helped Gokudera with his migraines. Even if the Advil had worked, as it sometimes did when Gokudera was exceptionally lucky, it never completely numbed his head and only marginally dulled the pain. The one way to effectively deal with the migraines, as they had learned from experience, was for him to simply go to sleep. Sleeping relaxed the tensed sphincters in his head that were restricting the blood flow to his head and causing the migraine. When Gokudera woke up from his sleep, he would be back to normal.

"You haven't slept well lately, have you? I think you should go home and sleep," suggested Yamamoto.

"_No_," said Gokudera obstinately. "I think we should stay here."

"It doesn't look like your migraine is getting any better," Tsuna put in, backing Yamamoto.

"I just need a distraction," said Gokudera, taking one hand off his head and waving it vaguely in the air. Distraction was his all-time favorite method for dealing with his problems, whether it was his emotions or just physical pain. "Isn't there that one movie that's in the theaters?"

"Yes, but whichever movie you're talking about, we're not going to go see it. C'mon," said Yamamoto firmly, getting up from his seat and tugging Gokudera up. "We're going home."

"I'm ruining all your fun! I'm sorry." Gokudera sighed, but didn't protest any further and let himself be led by Yamamoto to the door. Tsuna picked up his bag from the bench and carried it for him as they started making their way back down the way they came.

They hurried to the subway station. Gokudera tried to slide along the ground on his toes because any time he took a normal step on his heel, his head jogged and spiked with pain. Yamamoto was reminded of the time that Gokudera had suddenly collapsed with exhaustion on Tuesday after-school, but unlike that time, he had no courage to try to physically support Gokudera. The way that his migraine-suffering friend was grimacing was something that he was uneasy to approach.

It was nearing rush-hour time and the metro was getting to be crowded with people. Huddled together near the sliding doors of the metro train that they had gotten on, the only thing that they could do anymore was to wait for the train to reach their stop.

Gokudera had his cheek pressed to the metal holding pole that was attached at the end of the seat bench. The cool metal against the side of his head helped, although Gokudera, his mind hazy with pain, couldn't tell if the chill was acting as a cold pack to actually alleviate his pain or if it was serving as a useful distraction. Either way, he was equally grateful for it and he held on to the pole with a firm grip.

Yamamoto kept a close eye on him. Gokudera's eyes were closed, although his eyelashes flickered every once in a while, and his face had paled.

It was curious, Yamamoto thought.

When Gokudera had a minor inconvenience or annoyance, like a common cold, he complained about it good-naturedly to get a bit of attention. When he had a serious problem or something that sincerely upset him, he either kept entirely silent about it or broke out without warning.

But when he had a migraine, it was like he was fighting with himself to keep still and throw himself outwards at the same time. The meeting of opposing directions caused Gokudera to constantly writhe with loosely restrained force and let out a sort of hum of misery that matched the thrum of the metro train as it sped down the tracks and through the city to their destination.

The clashing mix of head and body, the mental with the physical, that Gokudera's migraines were, reminded them that the mind was not the all important control-room of a person – outside the head and beyond thought, there were cruder, more physical problems to be dealt with and the mental machinery had to be left to improvise.

But despite it all, no matter how Gokudera's elusive behavior zigzagged in all directions, even as he was softly whining while gripping a subway pole, he always seemed to be in complete command of himself.

An open seat became available and Gokudera, although he normally never sat in the subway, didn't argue and just obediently sat down on it when Tsuna pointed it out to him.

"Lovely. Ass-warmed seats," he muttered sarcastically as he sat, showing a glint of his usual personality, before putting his head down in the hopes of getting oxygenated blood to his brain and making his head feel better. His head was almost between his knees in the motion-sickness position.

Although Yamamoto, from his stance in front of Gokudera's seat, couldn't see anything except the back of Gokudera's silver head and his back, where his shirt was riding slightly up, it was evident that the seated boy's jagged breathing was not as normal. Gokudera was breathing quickly but not lightly; it sounded curiously like he was using the same small to portion of his lung over and over again.

It sounded like he was crying.

Yamamoto remembered the time when he had been struck by a moment of pure dread on one particularly memorable summer day back when they had all been in middle school. It had been during vacation, and after they had gone swimming, Gokudera had been struck, as though by a bolt from the blue, with such a bad migraine that he had cried. Yamamoto remembered feeling completely horrified, completely at a loss at what to do except stand around and fidget agitatedly near the bed that Gokudera was lying on. Gokudera had his face turned to the wall and away from him, but Yamamoto could still hear the crying.

Young and clueless, Yamamoto had considered whether he should just flee from the room and let Gokudera alone instead of just standing around uselessly and feeling terrified, when Gokudera had wiped his eyes, turned on the bed to face Yamamoto, and blew him away with his confession.

"I'm not crying because it really hurts that much," he had said. "I'm making myself cry because it distracts me from the pain."

It would have been comical if the topic hadn't been so serious, but Yamamoto had completely believed Gokudera then, and he still did now. Gokudera never lied about the things he felt were important, and the years that they had spent together had proved that Gokudera never cried, at least not around others, except at a few of his worst migraines.

But Gokudera wasn't crying now. He was most likely too exhausted to make himself cry even if he wanted to.

'It's like he's showing his pain just enough to keep us concerned but not to overtly disturb us,' Yamamoto thought. 'Will he _ever_ relax control, or is being controlled a part of the way he is?'

Stepping a little back and glancing around the rest of the subway car, Yamamoto noticed that it was not just him who had noticed Gokudera's curious breathing. Several of the people standing beside him, as well as some of the people sitting in the near vicinity, were casting strange stares at the suffering boy.

Yamamoto wanted to tap Gokudera on the shoulder and tell him, "People are looking at you," but decided against it. Gokudera needed to put all his focus into taking his mind away from the migraine.

He only disturbed Gokudera when they reached their stop.

* * *

The three wordlessly walked up the subway stairs and climbed out of their exit. Tsuna and Yamamoto glanced at the boy who was still holding his head with one hand. Gokudera was slightly swaying from side to side.

"Gokudera… can you get home all right?"

"Of _course_ I can get to my house," Gokudera replied brusquely. His voice was stressed and had gotten huskier. "I've only done it for the past five years."

Yamamoto nodded once at Tsuna. "I go the same direction as him anyway, so I can walk him." He looked to Gokudera, who didn't respond.

"Well, okay." Tsuna started regretfully shuffling down his section of the street. "See you guys tomorrow morning, then?"

"No guarantees," said Gokudera. "Don't call me if I don't show. _I_'ll call when I feel better, okay?"

"Alright." Tsuna said quietly. "Hope you get better soon."

The two other boys also turned and began going their route. Yamamoto stayed a respectful meter away from Gokudera, but glanced at him to check up every few moments.

It probably looked worse than it actually was, because of the white glare of the streetlights and the dark contrast created by the night shadows, but Gokudera looked paler than before. There was an unhealthy sheen about his face.

"You look really weak," Yamamoto wanted to say, but didn't. If he said it jokingly, which wasn't how he felt, Gokudera would probably laugh softly and hold his head because of the vibrations. If he said it seriously, to express his concern, Gokudera would mostly likely stay silent and be offended.

It was always an interesting combination of independence and selfishness that Gokudera exemplified whenever he got a migraine.

'The thing is, he acts like a bit of a jerk to us when he's sick because he knows that he can get away with it. He knows we'll instantly forgive him because we feel bad for him and we can't help thinking that he's only acting that way because his head hurts so much,' Yamamoto thought. 'But it's not true. Gokudera always has control of himself. If he thought that we wouldn't tolerate his snappy behavior, he wouldn't act that way, but since he knows us, he pushes the limits because he knows he can. He _wants_ to give us a hard time, sometimes.'

Although this wasn't a particularly charming revelation about his friend, Yamamoto couldn't help still thinking that it was okay for Gokudera to be testy if he wanted to, particularly when he was sick and feeling down.

He checked on Gokudera. Gokudera had been handed a flyer from a distributing marketer on the sidewalk and was fanning himself with it. His breathing had calmed a little.

"Are you hot?"

Gokudera didn't turn to look at Yamamoto, but he paused his fanning for a moment to nod before he resumed trying to cool down.

"How come? It's… almost cold out here."

"You know how my migraines work," Gokudera said in a curt tone. "Did you forget? When I get stressed, it messes up my system and my blood doesn't circulate right. Especially not to my head, which is why I get dizzy. But since my blood isn't flowing right anywhere, my body temperature drops, so my surroundings feel warmer to me."

'So it's not his body that enters his mind with its physical pain, it's his mind that infiltrates his body with its stress,' Yamamoto thought as he revised his earlier impression. 'Gokudera's stress makes him feel physically different from everyone else, and every incident that he goes through gives him a new perspective.'

It was frightening just how much control Gokudera's thoughts had over Gokudera, instead of the other way around.

When they neared Yamamoto's sushi restaurant, Gokudera tilted his head towards it.

"Your stop."

Yamamoto would have preferred to walk Gokudera to his house and see him off safely instead of going to the restaurant to help his father, but there was little choice in the matter. His father would probably let him go with Gokudera if he explained that his friend was feeling sick, but it was almost certain that Gokudera would refuse to let him go with him.

He reluctantly stepped towards the restaurant and turned back at the door.

"Tomorrow, then. Call, will ya?"

Yamamoto opened the door and went inside his father's sushi place. He didn't look back. He knew it would be pointless.

Gokudera continued down the street. But instead of turning at the corner to go towards his house, he went to the park, ambling along with his aching head as though it were normal to have plans to spend the whole night in a public park.

He got to the place and kicked out the leaves that had newly fallen there since the hustler had cleared them out. The tree and bushes surrounding the area rustled. Taking out whatever clothes he had in his bag, he spread them out and covered the ground. His ritual felt like a forbidden sacrament; the pain in his head a divine warning. Gokudera laid down, hugging his bag, and felt the ground, solid but not uncomfortable, underneath him.

His migraine felt like all the stress that he had acquired over the past month, but particularly the past week, had solidified into its own planet. The wispy flecks of his emotions, usually floating free inside his head and above his brain, had slowly gravitated towards each other, their movements as inevitable and undeniable as the laws of physics, and once forming into a denser and denser sphere that made the separate emotions into a single tangible incarnation, set down on his brain and demanded attention.

Gokudera clutched the part of his head where his world of troubles lay. His quiet whines were imperceptible to the other people in the park, and even if they had heard, they would not have gone to help him. He was in the eye of the hurricane again, and this time, everything outside his head was whipped by the winds.

Finally he fell asleep. His breathing evened and deepened and his blood circulation returned to normal.

When Gokudera woke the next day, feeling cold, the planet in his head had burst and dispersed its specks into the atmosphere. The teenage boy knew that his troubles were still with him, still hanging above him, but they were no longer so heavily on his mind, and for that much, he was gratified.

* * *

**Stress is a terrible thing, but it happens to all of us.**

**Gokudera basically doesn't have to deal with his stress: his body does it for him.**

**How do you deal with your stress?**

**Review, please.**


	13. Chapter 13

**My excuse for not updating is that I had surgery and was sick. It is/was pretty nasty.**

**That's also my excuse for this chapter being very strange. I, personally, am very disappointed in myself.**

**But I hope you'll be more forgiving.**

* * *

"I wonder if Gokudera's feeling okay now."

Tsuna had his head turned to the window as though he expected Gokudera to walk past it in a couple of minutes. He and Yamamoto were in a café, empty cups on one side of the table and homework papers in the other. Doubtfully picking up his cup, he pulled on the straw and got nothing but wet specks in his mouth and a rasping sound.

"You're bored, aren't you?" Yamamoto commented. His words were a statement and he glanced out the window and then back at his notebook. "Do you want to go take a break for a bit?"

"No," Tsuna sighed. "I'd want to come back here and then we'd have to buy something else to stay." After a pause he added, "And also, I'm not just asking about Gokudera just because I'm bored."

"Right." Yamamoto's pen clicked shut as its owner pushed the cap down with his thumb. He looked down at the papers on the table and held down a loose sheet that was about to blow away. "How far are you with the project?" He put his pen down on the loose paper.

"Pretty far in. We're basically done." The small, brown-haired boy shrugged a little dissatisfiedly. "Technically we should practice the speaking part of the presentation, but it looks like we'll just be practicing that individually."

Tsuna folded a worksheet in half and put it inside his bag. "And you?"

"Getting along…. Speaking of getting along, how are you with Kyoko?"

Tsuna shrugged. "We're friendly. More than that I don't know."

"You want to date her?"

"Of course! You call that a question?"

It was Yamamoto's turn to shrug. He felt like he was turning into Gokudera. "Seems like most of the boys at our school want to date _a_ girl, not _this_ girl."

"Well, I want to date Kyoko."

Tsuna' voice could not be described as firm, but it was far from uncertain, far from being a whim. Gokudera might have laughed and patted Tsuna on the back, but the way that Tsuna had meant those words kept Yamamoto from even grinning. But still he couldn't quite understand how Tsuna could be so focused on Kyoko and Kyoko alone. Was it something about Kyoko or something about Tsuna that made this long-term affection possible?

He wanted to ask but wasn't sure how.

Then Yamamoto suddenly remembered something that he had once glanced by on an advice column. Some man had written to ask if he should leave his current girlfriend and try to get back together with his high school sweetheart who had suddenly shown up back in his life. The advice columnist had replied, firmly, that the 'sweetheart' had come back just to use him and that he wasn't really in love with her; he was in love with the feeling that he had gotten when he had been with her. He wanted to ask if Tsuna knew the crucial difference.

Both their cell-phones buzzed at the same time, notifying their respective owners of a new text. Tsuna was faster and broke the news to Yamamoto before the other boy had even found his phone in the depths of his bag.

"Gokudera's better and he's coming," he said, as his thumbs rapidly typed out a text reply. "I'm telling him that we're here."

Yamamoto nodded as he found his own phone and read the text that Gokudera had sent both of them.

_just got up. migraine's gone. where u at?_

Gokudera would be here within fifteen minutes at the earliest. Yamamoto felt a slight rush to ask his question to Tsuna before the other boy got here. For reasons that he couldn't quite explain, but which had something to do with not wanting to be perceived as a sap by the sardonic rocker-haired boy, he didn't want Gokudera to be around and know that he was curious about these types of emotionally-controlled situations.

"So, uh, about Kyoko. How… do you feel when you're with her?" he asked, phrasing his question indirectly and glancing at Tsuna. He looked away and out the window inadvertently.

"It's nice, I suppose. Not like the world exploding or anything – we're not even dating yet, after all. I get sort of nervous cuz I don't know her all that well, but it's not a bad feeling." Tsuna smiled, feeling a little embarrassed. "Why you ask?"

"Oh, it was just…" Yamamoto scratched the back of his head like he had seen the actors in the movies do when they didn't know exactly why they had done something. He thought fast and remembered another magazine column he had read.

"I once heard somewhere that some guys, when they think about someone they like," he said, "they want to sort of shrink them, pick them up, and put them on a shelf." Yamamoto mimed the picking-up with the crooked index finger and thumb of one hand and put an imaginary miniature of a person on his other hand which he had held out flat palm up. "Like one of those china doll ornament figurines, you know, to be nice to look at."

"I don't think of Kyoko that way!" exclaimed Tsuna predictably. His face was lit up in shock. "Where'd you here that? Gokudera?"

"No, not _Gokudera_," Yamamoto quickly said, feeling somewhat like he was defending his friend from getting subtly insulted. "I don't know where I heard it. On TV or something, I think. So, anyways, that's not the way you feel, then?"

"I don't think _anybody_ should feel that way about _anyone_," said Tsuna emphatically, shaking his head as he spoke for added stress. "It's… not right."

"I didn't ask you if it was _right_ – I was just _saying_," Yamamoto wanted to say, but didn't.

Tsuna's last statement rather annoyed him, although he wasn't sure why. It wasn't like the mousy boy was forcing his beliefs on him or pressing him to think a certain way, but just the way that he had said it with his flat quiet voice sounded like he was stating an unchangeable fact, and that was irritating.

Yamamoto thought about how Gokudera would react to the same china doll figurine scenario. Knowing Gokudera, he would either say passionately, "I _completely_ agree with that. That's _absolutely_ true," or scoff "What a load of bull. _I_ don't believe that," or just "Mhm. Okay." to show that he had heard but didn't particularly care, or some other answer that would just smack of whatever he felt in his tone as well as in his words. Gokudera's responses could be infuriating, and quite often they were when Yamamoto found himself caring too much about what the other boy thought, but it was also blatantly clear that it was an opinion, however strong it was, and that was comforting.

"Well, I suppose it's objectifying, but I don't think it was meant jerkishly when I heard it," he appeased. "It was just sort of matter-of-fact."

"That's even worse," Tsuna groaned, but his voice was weak.

The bell on the café door clanged and they both looked to the door expectantly, but it was simply a man whom they didn't know and they looked away, not quite disappointed but feeling more bored than they had before.

"You think Gokudera would think of girls that way?" Yamamoto suddenly asked, a little disbelievingly. He was getting that slightly defensive feeling again. He didn't personally think that thinking of girls as figurines was a particularly disrespectful or demeaning way of thinking, but he knew that Tsuna didn't think that way and he was anxious not to leave the third-party in their friend group in a bad light.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. But it sounds like the sort of thing that he might joke about."

Yamamoto shrugged and decided to drop the subject. If he wanted to know what Gokudera thought, he could just ask Gokudera himself. He picked up his empty cup in the same gesture that he had made with the imaginary figurine and slid himself down the bench so he could throw it away. Tsuna similarly put away his papers to get ready to leave.

They were both standing outside the café, flanking the entrance with their bags on their shoulders, when Gokudera arrived. He still looked worn from his migraine, but he was ruffling his still damp hair from his morning shower and he looked at least slightly fresher than he had the last night.

"Hey," he said, grinning, completing their group.

The three walked off down the street to find a new place for them to stay.

* * *

Gokudera didn't have that much homework left, so he was procrastinating more than ever now that he didn't need to work as hard. He was supporting his head with his hand, elbows on the table of the new coffee shop that the three had decided to use. He rubbed his chin.

"Aww, I forgot to shave," he fussed, his hand covering the bottom half of his face.

"It's not noticeable," Tsuna said when Gokudera had put his hand down. Yamamoto looked as well, curious but not wanting to seem so. It could have just been because of the yellow lightning of the coffee shop, but he couldn't tell if Gokudera was showing one way or the other.

"How often do you shave?"

"Every few days. I actually don't have to shave that often, but it bothers me, so I just do. It's been two days or so. You really can't see it?" he asked, jutting out his chin. Tsuna shook his head. Gokudera put his hand up to his chin again. "I can _feel_ it, though."

Then he put his hand down on the table and grinned.

"Have you seen the freshman boys at our school? I mean, I know that they only just started having to shave and it's new for them and all, but you'd think that they'd be a bit more diligent about it. They're practically growing mustaches." He grinned wider. "It's cute, in a way, how they're so oblivious, but you'd think that _someone_ would at least tell them."

"Tell them to shave, you mean? Why don't you?"

Gokudera shook his head, still smiling.

"Nah. I just see them skittle around in the hallways. But some of them look ridiculous!" he exclaimed, putting his hands palm up and laughing a little bit. "Like I said, I think it's sort of cute and I don't have the heart to tell them to change what they're doing, or rather, not doing."

"Well, you know, once you start shaving, it's like, for forever, so maybe the boys you saw were the ones who haven't started yet," put in Yamamoto reasonably. "I know I put it off for as long as I could. The freshmen may just be unconscious of how their faces are. For us it's more noticeable because we grow out thicker now that we've been shaving for a while."

"Yeah, for us it's sort of impossible not to notice after a little bit. But them! They still have this peach fuzz!" Gokudera ran his finger tips over his upper lip and then looked back down at his homework. He laughed to himself down at his notebook, sounding unexpectedly delighted.

Yamamoto felt his own chin. He had shaved yesterday so his face was still smooth enough. His father, he knew, shaved everyday out of habit, but he himself was still young enough that he didn't need to be quite as diligent. He wondered if he had been one of those freshman boys who neglected to shave when he had been a few years younger. Back then, he'd only shaved when his father had told him to and had been largely oblivious to everything.

He got out his phone and checked the time. It was the awkward hour or so before dinnertime, and in a little while, he would have to go to his father's restaurant to help serve the customers at the six o'clock rush hour.

When he looked up from his phone, Gokudera was looking at him. "You have to go?"

"Not right now, but in a bit."

The silver-haired teenager let out a breath, shifted restlessly in his seat, and checked his watch. "I think I'm going to stop doing homework," he said. "Tell you what; I'll help you and your dad at the restaurant."

"Are we stopping homework for today?" asked Tsuna, catching on to their conversation and holding his pencil midair in an indefinite position.

Gokudera looked around the table and shrugged. "I guess so," he said, turning back to Tsunas. "I don't suppose you'll be coming with us?" He got up and touched Yamamoto on the shoulder as he scooted past him. "I'm going to stop by my house before I get to your dad's place."

"Well," said Yamamoto, a little uncertainly but definitely welcoming Gokudera's surprise offer. "My dad will be glad to have you, but… you sure you want to come? It's sort of boring, what I do."

"Sure. Why not?" Gokudera spoke casually, but he was thinking hard.

If he helped out at the sushi restaurant, he could use that as an excuse to borrow Yamamoto for the night and possibly take the other boy to the place in the park. Gokudera was not at all sure if he was ready or if he even truly wanted to share his private place with anybody else, but whether he was or not, he wanted to have the option and the choice and open himself up to the idea, at the very least.

Yamamoto considerately looked to Tsuna. "You gonna go to your house for dinner?"

"Yeah. I didn't eat dinner with my family yesterday night, and I probably should tonight."

"Alright, then." Gokudera jerked his head to the clear door of the coffee shop and out into the darkening streets.

The three had parted for their own ways and as Gokudera walked home, he wondered what he should do. It was good to keep the place in the park for himself, but he had not frequented it so often that the novelty of the place had worn out when he was there alone. There was no need to share the place. But yet, he felt that the place, as humble and crude as it was, was meant to be shared.

He reached his apartment. Perhaps because he had now spent two nights outside the house, he now had a consciousness that even going home was a choice. It was a comforting feeling that helped him lose the sense of anxiety that he previously had.

He unlocked the front door and stepped into the house with an empty mind. As he took his shoes off at the doorway, he listened. It was quiet all around the apartment floor, just like it had been that morning when he had snuck in guiltily to wash up. Gokudera got to his room and threw his bag to the side. Even if being in the house didn't make him feel as uneasy as he used to, he still intended to get out in the minimal amount of time.

Stopping on the doorway out with one foot out the door and checking his appearance on the metal strip of the doorframe, he wondered again if he was ready to bring someone else into his place in the park. He was sure that besides the hustler, who had randomly found it and who was now seemingly out of town for all he cared, would not come back, and that he was only one who currently knew that the clearing existed. Was he willing to give that up?

"Ah, I'll just decide later when the time comes," he thought, as he stepped completely out.

* * *

When he went into the sushi restaurant, Yamamoto was wiping tables and his father was at the outside counter. There were only a few people in the restaurant; the dinner rush-hour wouldn't start until another half hour. The father, recognizing him, smiled and waved as Yamamoto stopped what he was doing and approached him with a smile on his face and a cleaning rag in his hand.

"You sure you want to stay and help?" he asked again, mood suddenly rising. He wanted Gokudera to stay with him and keep him company, but didn't want him to think that this was an obligation. "Like I said, it's pretty boring stuff and you can go whenever you want."

"I'm already here, aren't I?" Gokudera shrugged. "Might as well stay. I'll probably just bum around and distract you from your work, but I can do simple stuff like wiping tables."

Yamamoto got him another rag and the two boys wiped tables side by side.

It _was_ rather mundane work no matter how it was viewed. It didn't require any thought; just rotor movement. The restaurant was fairly quiet. Gokudera and Yamamoto worked on the same tables together, doing half each. The mood wasn't awkward, and Gokudera would never have said anything about it even if it had been, but he did feel that he ought to say something, and he wanted to, so he did.

"So, uh, this is what you do every week, eh?" he said, not looking up.

"Yeah," his cleaning-companion laughed. "So glamorous, right? Are you regretting coming to help yet?"

"No no, it's fine." Gokudera shook his head while still looking down and his bangs draped around his face. He stopped wiping. "Better than I expected. When do you get off?"

"Depends. Nine-ish, maybe. Ten if it runs late. But since you're here, dad will probably let us off early. But why?"

"Just asking." Gokudera switched to a new table and started wiping that one. When Yamamoto moved on with him, he spoke again. "Tsuna ever done this with you?"

"Nah. You hadn't either, really, before tonight. What made you want to?"

"Just did." Gokudera shot him a smile. "Saturday night. Nothing better to do."

Yamamoto smiled back and briefly thought of what Tsuna might be doing at this time. He probably wouldn't have anything special to do either, just watching a movie or playing computer games or daydreaming about Kyoko, doing nothing that required cognitive thinking. Wiping tables didn't require cognitive thinking either, but the task seemed both more significant and less important now that Gokudera was here with him.

"Uhm, I was talking with Tsuna earlier," Yamamoto said, thinking of the conversation he had had with Tsuna in the café. He was almost more curious about how Gokudera's response would differ from either his or Tsuna's than he was about the actual opinion. "And I was talking about how I heard about how some guys think of the people they like. You know, _like_-like."

Gokudera laughed, as he always did when the subject involved emotions. "Okay. So, how do they think?"

"Well, that they sort of want to pick them up and put them up on a shelf like a figurine." Yamamoto quickly mimed the motions of the scenario again but didn't say anything more, knowing that the other boy would tell him his thoughts without further prompting. He didn't feel the sense of slight embarrassment and caution that he had felt with Tsuna; he knew that Gokudera didn't live by any conscious set of morals himself to judge him by.

"That makes sense." Gokudera paused and then nodded at the air in a way that suggested that he was contemplating his own words or was rethinking the scenario. "Yeah, I think I know the feeling."

"What? Really?"

By his own surprise, Yamamoto realized that when he had previously thought of how Gokudera might react, all his presumed responses had been from the point of view of a person who had never experienced the feeling himself. He had never thought that Gokudera, who was the least romantic person he could think of, would include himself in the 'some guys' category that he had referred to in such a detached sense. But more than that, there was a more pressing question.

"About who?"

"Haven't you ever wanted to, just, _pocket_ someone?" Gokudera smiled almost shyly. He wasn't embarrassed about what he felt, but he felt embarrassed talking about it. "I know it sounds really possessive, but it's really not. It's just… a thing."

Yamamoto wasn't about to let up. "I thought you said that you've never liked anyone!"

"Yeah. I haven't."

"Then who'd you feel that way about?"

"Look, it's nothing special." Gokudera would have been nonchalant about the whole matter but the urgency in Yamamto's voice was starting to alarm him slightly. He jerked his head to cue them both to move to the next table. "It's not serious at all. It's just like…" Gokudera looked out the window, squinted at nothing in particular, and vaguely waved his hand. "… like when I go to buy something and the counter guy smiles at me, or when I pass by a street performer who's really into it, or something like that. It's only with strangers; with people I don't really know. It's not like I'd do it even if I actually could."

"But…" Yamamoto put his hand to the back of his head again. He wasn't sure what to think or how to respond. The other boy was clearly not lying, but nothing that he was saying was clear either. "What exactly do you…feel, or, or mean, or whatever about the picking-up or pocketing thing, though? I'm getting told two different things, here."

"You're thinking it's a romance," Gokudera said, smiling at his use of the word 'romance' in such a way that would have looked condescending if he had meant it harshly. "It's not a romance. For me it's something different," he said shortly.

The silver-haired boy looked up to nowhere and tried to find the words to match what he felt. Images flashed by in his head. The college-student guy in the eye-sore polo shirt on the night-shift at 7-Eleven who had beamed at him when he had poked his head in the store to simply ask for directions. That one time when he had gone for a random walk through unfamiliar alleys and the streets had rung with the music of a saxophone player who only put down his cap after passersby had started tossing change to him. The first time that he had seen the hustler at the bus terminal without knowing who he was.

He had always thought, 'That's fuckin' weird,' when he heard old grandmas cooing that they could eat up their grandchildren because they were just so cute, but now he figured that this feeling was his version of the same thing.

'It's not a strong attraction, but it's a type of attraction, maybe a connection,' he thought. 'I don't want the person; I want what they represent to me in those snapshot moments. Yes, that's it, they're symbols, incarnations, of the qualities that I like and admire."

But he didn't say any of this out loud. Instead he said, "Art. It's like art. Art collectors who really appreciate art don't buy art because they just want to own a certain work or to show-off to visitors. They get art because it makes them feel good to see it, to look at it. It's the same thing."

The dinner rush-hour had now started, and although no prolonged periods of work were required, the tables to wipe came in short, quick bursts that made serious conversation impossible. Gokudera snatched bites of food and glanced at the wall-clock whenever he could.

As the flow of diners began to decrease, Gokudra elbowed Yamamoto. "It's eight-thirtyish now. D'you want to ask your dad to see if we can go?"

"Sure," Yamamoto said over his shoulder as he went through the kitchen flap to where the sushi restaurateur was. Gokudera watched him go, still wondering if he should take him to the place in the park or not. When the other boy came back through the flap, with a wide grin and his dad's permission to go, he had made his decision.

Twenty minutes later, they were in the park.

* * *

"I've never really been here at night," Yamamoto said, looking around everywhere through the dimly lit park as though he was seeing it for the first time. In a way, the sense was true: the park looked different at night when moths were flying around the lamps that lit the grass grey.

"Looks different, doesn't it? But I'm used to it cuz I come here a lot." Gokudera's hands were playing with the bottom seams of his shirt. He barely had to look in front of him to know where he was going. "For night-walks, I mean."

"Good place to just chill," Yamamoto agreed, still sweeping his gaze from side to side.

'Well, I wouldn't know about 'just chill,' Gokudera privately thought. ''Chill' denotes something too much like 'carefree' to accurately describe me.'

But he said, "Mhm. Yeah, it is," and kept his thoughts to himself.

"Come on." He started going off the path into the brush. This would be simply a casual visit, he told himself, and felt less insecure. "There's this place that I found that I want to show ya."

Walking through the spindly trees, their steps crackling with dry leaves, they got to the enclosed place in the park.

"So." Gokudera stepped a little further into the middle and turned around with his arms spread. "What'dya think?"

"Whoa." Yamamoto voice was mostly breath, blending in with the wind. "This is great! How'd you find this place?"

Gokudera put on a small smile. "I saw this little white rabbit and followed it." He _had_ seen a wild rabbit once when he had come to the park, he remembered, although it had been irrelevant to finding the clearing. It had been mostly dark brown except for its white tail and it had hopped futilely as he had followed it's tail into the woods until he felt that he would lose the path if he went any further. That had been almost five months ago.

"Really? A wild rabbit?"

Jaime shrugged and nodded.

"Like _The Matrix_!" said Yamamoto, spinning around and smiling.

"Like _Alice in Wonderland_," Gokudera shot back. "The Tim Burton version." He lowered himself down and laid on the cold ground, hands under his head, eyes closed, and wondered seriously what he should do next. He spoke for lack of knowing what to do. "I come here to think, figure things out and stuff. Sometimes it works." He sat up, propped by his arms from behind and his legs crossed in front, and opened his eyes. "And sometimes it doesn't."

"Still." Yamamoto was sitting next to him in a similar fashion with his legs stretched out straight. "Good place to just _be_, you know?"

The nearest lamp was still meters away behind the trees. The city smog never allowed the moon or the stars to shine significantly enough to be noticed if not directly looked at. Yamamoto looked the same now as he did in daylight when he was directly looked at, just less brightly moral and more accessible; maybe it was the atmosphere or the background that was making Gokudera want to lean over, grab his face, and kiss him.

'It's so very curious,' Gokudera thought, still calmly eyeing Yamamoto. He felt very relaxed. 'I'm not in love with him but I feel like could live with him for the rest of my life. I could marry him and not feel miserable. He's my friend, and I think of him as such, so why do I feel like I want to fucking make out with him under me? The one thing that the hustler wouldn't give me, I want from _him_, of all people,' he mused. 'But it's not even a very strong want. It just _is_. So very strange.'

Gokudera didn't do anything except look, and after a moment more of staring at his intriguing friend, looked away to the direction of the lamp where a couple slivers of light were shining past the trees, trying to figure what he was supposed to do now. There was nothing more to say.

Next to him, Yamamoto was quietly observing his own feelings. Whether it was just because of the dim lighting, or the sharp shadows cast by what light there was, he thought that Gokudera looked different and was trying to discern why or how it had happened. He had felt that way since the coffee shop.

'Everything's sharper. Gokudera always looked angled before because his facial structure is just cut that way, but now it looks positively sharp-edged. From the side, with his head turned just like that, his five o'clock shadow makes his jawline look _so_ sharp.' Yamamoto thought about reaching out and running his hand along that jaw and feeling the edge of bone under his fingers to see how firm it was. From where he was, it looked like a line, fragile and hard at the same time. He felt his own jaw.

"What do you suppose girls feel about stubble?" Yamamoto suddenly said, laughing a little at himself for being bold enough to break the quiet.

Gokudera barely turned his head. "What do you mean?"

"Like, if they like guys with stubble or not. Kissing a guy with stubble would be sort of scratchy, wouldn't it?" Yamamoto looked at Gokudera's jaw again.

Leaning forward and putting his elbow on his crossed-legs and his head in his hands, Gokudera considered it. His chin was covered from view. "Yeah, it'd be scratchy, but I'm guessing that it depends on the person. But I wouldn't know," he said quietly, thinking again of how he hadn't been able to kiss the hustler.

It was an anticlimactic reply and Yamamoto felt slightly disappointed. The actual opinion that girls had about stubble was less important to him than Gokuderae's response and now that Gokudera had responded so reasonably and lifelessly, so unlike how he usually was, all the curiosity had gone out of him. He let out a breath and looked to the ground.

"Yeah, probably just depends."

Yamamoto was thankful that they were in a park. He was unused to Gokudera being like this. The silence of the immobile indoors would have made his friend's silence hard to stand, but outside with the crispy leaves and the crunchy gravel of distant strangers' footsteps and the crickets, it was okay.

Gokudera listened to the same forest sounds that the other boy was hearing. He was feeling disappointed as well, feeling the same sense of anticlimax, except in more poignant form.

"What did I think was even going to happen?" he thought rather bitterly. "That the world was going to fucking explode? Yamamoto doesn't even know what this place _means_. And we're not even doing anything. I shouldn't have brought him here."

He got up in stiff movements and beckoned for his clueless friend to get up as well. Startled, Yamamoto hurriedly looked around the clearing one last time before following Gokudera's rough steps out into the regular path. Wordlessly, Gokudera started walking Yamamoto back to the main street.

Right before they parted, he cleared his throat and elbowed Yamamoto slightly without looking. "Uhm, you know that place in the park that I just showed you? Well, that's like, _my place_, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't, you know." He nodded and glanced at the other boy up through his silver bangs and then back down.

"Oh, yeah, sure. Thanks for showing me it, though, it was like... it was pretty cool," Yamamoto said awkwardly. "Yeah, so… See you tomorrow, then."

Shaking his head in farewell, Gokudera turned his back and went down the street in his direction.

Yamamoto watched him go, wondering what the hell had happened.

* * *

**If you ask me, this chapter makes no sense, but...**

**A lot of the stuff that goes down in this chapter is stuff that happened during one of my (regular) days, so... maybe it's just life that makes no sense.**

**Review, please.**


	14. Chapter 14

**Phew. I was panicking for a moment there, but I think I've gotten this chapter somewhat back on track.**

**I would have written more, but it was already quite long.**

**The next update will be soon.**

* * *

Yamamoto wasn't sure why, but as he was mindlessly washing up before bed, he felt an intense feeling come over him.

It was so sudden and unexpected that he took his toothbrush out of his mouth in the middle of brushing his teeth and glanced around the bathroom to see if something around him was the cause of the feeling. Outside the bathroom, he could hear his father shifting on the creaky couch and could make out the sounds of some sort of television show on air. Everything seemed to be as it was supposed to be and yet the feeling, which Yamamoto now realized was something definitely unpleasant, remained.

He put his free hand to his front and touched his sternum to see if his chest had caved in. There was an uncertain consciousness that the feeling was something emotional, but it felt so sharp and physical that he couldn't resist the urge to pat his body down and check if everything was in place.

Toothpaste suds drying in his open mouth and the sink faucet still running water, Yamamoto tried to figure out what the strange feeling was. If he had been superstitious, he would have called it a sixth sense, and if he had still been a kid, he would have thought that his heart had broken. But as it was, as a fairly well-educated teenage boy, the best possible explanation that he could rationally think of was that the feeling was some sort of strange premonition.

He put his toothbrush back in his mouth and resumed brushing his teeth, thinking hard.

'My head feels clear enough, so how is it possible that I feel so… down like this? Emotions don't actually come from the heart; they come from the mind… so what _is_ this?'

He spat and started to rinse out his mouth.

There was no discernible way to describe the sensation; all Yamamoto knew that it made him feel like the loser of the century for no logical reason that he could think of. He ran his memory through his day. The only thing off that had happened that day was that Gokudera had acted a little strange, but that certainly hadn't affected him nearly enough to provoke this visceral reaction. He felt certain that the feeling was not the logical result of some factual happening.

Washing his hands and looking at the running faucet water, Yamamoto recalled how he had once seen on TV that people who lived near rivers or streams had higher rates of depression that people who lived on dry lands. The TV show had been scientific with psychiatric themes, and had discussed how staring at moving water for extended periods of time made people feel so calm to the point of reaching depression.

Yamamoto watched the water swirling around in the sink and streaming down the drain before he abruptly turned off the tap.

"Hey dad," he called, shaking the water off the tips of his fingers and stepping out of the bathroom. "Have you ever seen that one thing on TV that was about people who stare at water and how they get depressed and stuff?"

"No, but I've heard something similar," replied the dad, glancing at his son and back at the TV. "What about it?"

"Well, how long do you have to look at running water before you get depressed?"

The dad laughed. "It's not something that happens in a matter of minutes," he said, grinning. "You'd have to stare for weeks, maybe even months, on end."

"Oh." Yamamoto had one hand on his bedroom door and was leaning on the doorframe. "Okay then. Anyways, good night."

"Night."

Yamamoto clicked on the light in his room and closed the door behind him. He still had the unpleasant feeling.

'Is this depression?' he wondered, quite confused. 'But nothing especially bad has happened lately and it's not like I stare at water all the time.'

He suddenly wanted to text Gokudera and ask him what he thought. He couldn't ask Tsuna; he felt sure that Tsuna would not understand. After a moment of hesitation, he laid stomach-down on his bed, legs bent with his feet in the air, and got out his cell-phone. He opened a new text for Gokudera but didn't type anything. A feeling of terrible patheticalness and hopelessness seemed to transfer from the lit screen of his phone to his instinctive desire to seek help. Yamamoto stared at the screen of his cellphone for another moment before turning his phone off dejectedly and putting it next to his lamp on his bed-stand.

'What would I have even said, anyways?' Yamamoto sat up on his bed and mechanically stripped off his outdoor clothes, throwing them over his desk chair. 'That hey, I feel really down all of a sudden and don't know why?' He shook his head to himself and ruffled his hair. 'It sounds weird even to me. I don't even understand it. Of course he wouldn't have.'

He got up and clicked the light off. The only light in the room came from the ever-constant city light-pollution from the window. The curtains had been pulled aside. Just on a whim, he got up to look at himself in the dark. On the other side of the room, he had a full-length mirror that he stood in front of.

Because the weather was rapidly cooling as winter approached, he was almost cold enough to shiver with only his boxers on. Yamamoto looked at himself carefully, still feeling the unpleasantness that seemed to be at the center of his chest. There seemed to be nothing wrong with himself on the outside that he could see or figure out and yet he was eying the window sill and wanting to either stand immobile and do absolutely nothing, freeze himself in time, or break out the window and run screaming into the streets.

'Is this how people with depression feel?' The usually optimistic boy had never before quite understood why anyone would consider killing themselves when everyone died sooner or later, but he felt now that if having medical depression meant that a person felt like this constantly, he could very well understand why suicide was a valid option. The feeling made him consider the option himself.

He thought of the way Gokudera had looked in the park clearing.

'What was that about? What was he thinking? Has he ever felt like this?' Yamamoto wanted badly to ask the fellow teenage boy if he had ever known the same inexplicable feeling of depression that he was feeling now. In his mind, he could see Gokudera, still crouched over with his legs crossed and his silver bangs shrouding his face. It was impossible to know what that version of Gokudera was thinking or how he would react, but Yamamoto felt sure that Gokudera, with all his different aspects of personality, would have at least experienced something similar.

'But how would I ask him or explain it even if I tried? And what if he doesn't know what I'm talking about and doesn't take me seriously? He'll probably think that I'm over-thinking things and tell me to just chill out.'

Yamamoto climbed into bed, feeling emptier and more miserable than ever.

The bed-sheets were comfortably cool against his bare skin, and he hugged an extra pillow. The cool fabric against his chest distracted him slightly from the empty feeling that he had; it was like he was clutching the pillow into himself to try to fill the space that had hollowed out inside himself. Activating his physical senses helped to clear his mind and keep his thoughts away from suicide.

Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the distressing feeling went away.

He blinked and waited in the darkness. 'Weird,' he thought cautiously, wishing that he could smile at himself and wave the matter aside but still scared that the feeling would come back. He slowly set the pillow in his arms aside and pressed deep into the bed-sheets. 'What _was_ that?'

It couldn't be said that he felt whole again or that it was like the feeling had never happened; the memory of the incident was far too intense and worrisome for him to say that. If he tried to explain it, he would say that it felt like how he imagined Gokudera might feel with a migraine. The feeling coming suddenly and going away just as mysteriously was like a bodily migraine that had struck him fatally in the center and then eased away.

Finally able to relax, Yamamoto fell asleep.

In the one dream that he remembered out of the thousands of visions that he had that night, he was standing in a white field, under a white sky.

He was in a white world, but he was not at peace.

Yamamoto could not see anything, but in the whiteness, he could sense that there was _someone_ standing in front of him and next to him and behind him all at once. He himself was standing still, waiting uneasily for some sort of reaction. The next moment he was clutching his left cheek, struck hard across the face by the _someone_. There was no physical pain, only emotional pain, a feeling of terrible guilt, and a sense that he had deserved to be hit. He suddenly understood that the whiteness was a purgatory that he had been sent to as a consequence for killing himself before his time, and that the _someone_ had come to fetch him back. The _someone_ viewed his suicide as something impermissible, as a direct and personal insult, and was furious with him for even considering the idea. Yamamoto clutched his cheek and whined in pain but did not dare move without permission.

Then the real-life Yamamoto woke up. His extra pillow was pressing uncomfortably into the left side of his face and the sunlight from the window was shining down on him in a block of white light. Whatever his dream had been, a message or a prophecy, Yamamoto felt that the depression that he had felt the last night had been banished and would not return for a long while. As he sat up, squinting and moving out of the sun's burning whiteness, he could still hear the _someone_'s words in his mind.

It had been a promise – _If you ever try that again, I'll kill you_ – and Yamamoto thought that he might be in love.

* * *

As per usual on Sunday lunchtime, the trio met at the street corner and discussed what they should do to hang out for the day. After a little discussion, it was decided that they would go to the mall that was within twenty minutes speed-walking distance and see if they could catch a movie. They got to the movie theater and looked through the electronic movie listing devices that were to the side of the ticket-counters and the snack bar.

"_Who_'s idea was it to come here again? There's nothing to watch!" exclaimed Gokudera, slapping the digital database at the movie theater and futilely scrolling through the list of movies.

"Uhm, I think it was you, actually, who suggested that we come here." Yamamoto grinned and nudged his bored friend. "And there's not _nothing_ to watch. I'm sure we can find something. Come on, budge over so I can look."

Gokudera didn't move over. He jabbed at the screen.

"Yeah? Well look. We have _Secret Locker Notes_ and_ Bermuda Cruise _–freaking– _4_, and _Nemesis*_, which has no seats!" the boy at the digital database said emphatically, poking hard at the screen to indicate the movies titles that he was referring to. "Unless we want to wait for about two hours for _Nemesis_, we're going to have to watch _Secret Locker Notes_, and I'd really rather _not_."

"You haven't even gotten to the second page, yet," said Tsuna patiently, clicking the 'next' button on the screen. "What about _Punchline Case_?"

"It starts at four. We'd still have to wait about an hour. And besides, the ratings aren't good," Gokudera shot back, gesturing towards where the five rating stars were. "Look at that thing! It's like a 3.2!"

"Well, if you're gonna consider ratings," Yamamoto teased, "_Secret Locker Notes _is a 4.4, which is pretty damn good."

Gokudera shook his head and walked over to the benches that were a few meters away. "I dunno. You guys choose. I'll just go with whatever."

The other two scrolled through the movie listing, checked the times and seat availability charts, and then walked over to the third member of their trio.

"Well, the only thing that's really available at this time with the kind of seats that we want is _Secret Locker Notes_," Yamamoto said, grinning at the face that Gokudera was making at this news. "Aww, come on. It might not be that bad! If it's lasted this long in the theaters, it's got to mean something, right? But if you really don't want to, we can just walk around the mall, if you like."

Gokudera considered it for a moment and then turned to Tsuna. "What do you think?"

Tsuna shrugged. "No choice if we want to watch a movie at this time, is there? Of course, we could always just look around and shop like Yamamoto said."

"I don't have enough money to shop and I don't want to, anyway. Let's just watch the movie. But just letting you know – I'm blaming both of you guys if the movie turns out to suck," Gokudera grumbled, tossing his head to clear his bangs with an attitude before getting up and moving towards the counter along with his friends to buy the tickets for _Secret Locker Notes_.

The three bought their tickets individually as a rule, got some snacks and drinks, and made their way to the appropriate theater room. It was full of either groupies of teenage girls or college pairing dates. Although there were some other guys in their teens and twenties, the vast majority was noticeably composed of females, which was unsurprising considering that the movie that was going to show in a couple of minutes was a chick-flick.

"I can feel my chest hair falling out with all this estrogen," Gokudera commented from the head of the group, looking around at the other people in the theater and tripping up the steps at the lead as the three climbed up to their seats.

"_You_ don't _have_ any chest hair to lose," Yamamoto teased, reaching out and pulling at a strand of his friend's silver hair which was in front of him. "The hair on your _head_, maybe."

Gokudera startled at having his hair pulled, whipped around, and slapped Yamamoto's hand away from his head. He glared at the other boy. "I'll make _you_ lose your _pubic_ hair," he threatened with his kicking leg raised to emphasize his point menacingly before shaking his head roughly and using his hand to sweep his bangs to the side and set his hair right.

"Ooh, testy," laughed Yamamoto, who had instinctively crouched and dodged when Gokudera had made his physical threat. "Oh, now look what you made me do!" he said, looking at his slightly spilled coke leaking through the cup lid which had gone askew.

"Serves you right," Gokudera retorted, but then smiled apologetically and dabbed at the spilled drink with some of the napkins that Tsuna had been thoughtful enough to snatch from the snack bar as he had gotten popcorn.

They found their correct aisle with the light from the advertisements that were showing on the silver screen and sat down in the order that they had come: Gokudera, Yamamoto, and then Tsuna.

The three had arrived at the theater fairly late, so they only had to sit through a couple of ads before the emergency exits were pointed out to them and they were requested to turn off their cell-phones.

_Secret Locker Notes_ started. The main focus and character of the movie was a dirty-blond teenage girl in high school who was played by an actress who probably was and looked to be in her mid-twenties. As could have been foretold from the title, some boy, played by an actor who was horrid at acting and who had probably been chosen for the role purely based on his looks, was slipping flirty notes into the locker of the girl that he liked during class break periods or when he made an excuse to go the restroom.

Gokudera was rolling his eyes every five minutes, amused at the sheer awfulness of the plot and stealing sips from Yamamoto's coke even though he wasn't thirsty just to snicker at Yamamoto when the other boy poked him and told him to lay off.

Midway into the film, he quit scoffing at the movie simply because he was outnumbered and overpowered by the seemingly unlimited number of cheesy lines that the characters were saying at nearly every chance that they got. Gokudera just leaned back in his seat with a bland expression and let the bad plot turns and sappy romanticness wash over him without touching him, safe under his cover of skepticism and disbelief.

In the final quarter of the movie, even Yamamoto had to admit that the movie was not his type. He might have started messing about and criticizing the movie for something halfway interesting to do if Tsuna wasn't seated next to him directly to his left. He knew that Gokudera wouldn't mind him talking from the way that the boy to his right was fidgeting. But Tsuna _was_ directly next to him, so he kept quiet to be polite. If the brown haired boy's rapt expression was anything to go by, he was pretty taken with the movie and seemed to like it quite well. Yamamoto guessed, with a touch of sympathy, that Tsuna was probably less taken with the movie than he was with Kyoko, whom the movie was making him think of.

He looked to his right to Gokudera as surreptitiously as he could, moving just his eyes and not his head. Gokudera looked much the same as he had the last night, his face looking cut with its quiet expression in the dark, only intermittently lit up with the glow from the screen when the scene was exceptionally bright. He was staring straight ahead to the light from the screen, like he had done with the lamp in the park.

Then the silver-haired boy shook his head to himself, let out an annoyed breath, and looked to the side, off the screen and in the direction of the nearest exit. Yamamoto glanced at the screen to see what he was irritated about. The main couple had just dashed into one of the school buildings after school hours, giggling and wet from the rain outside. They were making out in the dim hallway, the boy pressing the girl against the lockers.

When Yamamoto looked back to Gokudera, Gokudera had his arms crossed in front of his chest and was looking down.

Yamamoto was reminded of the sudden bout of depression that he had felt at the center of his own chest the last night. Looking at Gokudera now, who had his arms crossed over his chest, and remembering Gokudera in the park clearing, who had crouched into himself with his chin tucked in, Yamamoto felt sure that Gokudera had, at least at one point, known the exact feeling that he had felt the night before. He hadn't talked to anyone about what he had felt, but suddenly he felt less alone and more secure in himself.

He touched Gokudera's leg with the back of his hand to get the other boy's attention. "You alright?"

"Yeah." Gokudera's voice was tired, almost inert. "This movie's sapping the life out of me."

Yamamoto smiled a little but he was a bit concerned. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I don't understand how anyone can like this movie. None of this stuff ever happens in real life. Like, _ever._"

Yamamoto wondered if part of the reason why Gokudera was so solidly an anti-romantic and a skeptic of all things emotional was because he was disappointed that it wasn't true in real life. "Probably not. Do you wish that it would?" he asked carefully.

Gokudera thought about it, then almost immediately came to the conclusion that he didn't. He had enough internal complications without adding more emotion to the mix to muddle things up. "No." He shook his head. "_Hell_ no."

"Tsuna probably does, though. He's really into the movie, I think."

His normally sarcastic movie-companion tilted his silver head with a small grin, seeming to regain his normal smart-alecky personality. "He's probably one of the extreme few who are actually watching it seriously. Because you know that the majority of the people in here sure didn't come to actually see the movie. Especially not the people in the back-row."

"The sad thing is, you're probably right," Yamamoto smiled back, feeling better now that Gokudera seemed to be feeling better. "What do you think about that?"

Both of their attentions were now completely diverted away from the activities on the screen as they whispered together in low tones, holding their small conversation.

"What, the people doing god-knows-what at the back-row?"

"Yeah. What do you think about what they're doing?"

"Well, to set things straight, I don't really _think_ about what they're doing, first of all," Gokudera said, deliberately misinterpreting what his friend said and making Yamamoto roll his eyes. "But I guess they can do what they want as long as they don't bother other people. It's not like anyone can tell them to stop cuz then it'll be completely awkward."

"What exactly do you think they're doing, back there?" Yamamoto asked, realizing that even though he had always known to steer clear of the back row, he had never known exactly why. "Are they just making out, or…?"

"I don't really know. I've always stayed away from the back row," said Gokudera, cracking an embarrassed smile. He shrugged. "I think most of them are just making out, but a few might actually be having sex, I think."

"Oh. Uhm." Yamamoto shifted uncomfortably in his seat, resisting the burst of curiosity to look at the back. "How's that even possible?"

Gokudera shrugged again. "I wouldn't know."

"Would you ever want to do it?" The question left his mouth before he had thought of what he would say, and feeling rather mortified for asking such an inappropriate question, Yamamoto wished that he could take it back. But it was too late.

"What about fucking in the back of some movie theater sounds appealing to you?" Gokudera exclaimed, prompting Yamamoto, who was blushing, to hurriedly shush him. He lowered his voice and spoke more quietly. "Anyways, even if I thought it was an alright idea, which I don't, I still wouldn't do it just because it's what everyone does and I don't want to do what everyone else does."

He thought about how he had had sex with the hustler in the middle of the park, wondering what he felt about what he himself had done.

'I should probably be a bit ashamed about that,' he thought. 'I mean, what kind of person even _does_ that? But _damn_, it was just so… I'll never regret it. No, I'll never regret it.'

Although the rather sleazy sexuality of his fling with the hustler had been the same, if not worse, than what the couples all around the world did at the backs of movie theaters, he felt that what he had done could be held above criticism simply because he had been and still was, he now realized, young and desperate and struggling. He viewed it more abstractly, as a call of help that had been answered in mysterious ways, rather than a simple paid-for fuck.

"What do you think?" Gokudera asked Yamamoto, looking sharply to his left. "Would _you_?"

The addressed teenager tried to picture himself at the back of the theater that he was currently in. With a little strain of the imagination, he could picture himself with a date at the very back, making out frenziedly with a dark outline of some girl that he couldn't even see properly.

He was wearing baggy pants and the girl was wearing a short skirt and no panties and straddling him on top of his lap and neither of them were paying any attention to the movie. When he broke away for a moment to catch his breath, he realized with a shock that Gokudera was sitting a few empty seats away. Gokudera was watching the movie and laughing and rolling his eyes and doing all the normal things that he did when he saw a decent movie; not in the least bothered by the illicit activities that were going down a mere meter or so from where he was.

When Yamamoto saw Gokudera, all that he wanted to do was shove the strange girl off his lap and go over to sit next to his friend and watch the movie with him.

"No, I wouldn't." Yamamoto replied firmly, thinking of how Gokudera had said that he would not and feeling surer about his own decision. "I wouldn't ever."

Gokudera beamed at him and clapped him on the shoulder, tossing his head almost proudly. Yamamoto suddenly felt as grateful to him as he had felt with the _someone_ in his dream, like Gokudera had just saved him from something, like he had forcefully prevented him from making the wrong choice.

They both looked back to the screen and watched the end-scene of the movie together peacefully.

/

[* All movie titles were my own invention and were completely made-up.]

* * *

**The sudden depression that Yamamoto feels is a result of hormones, by the way. It happens to me every once in a while.**

**Hope you agree with me that this chapter was marginally better than the last one.**

**Review, please.**


	15. Chapter 15

**Sexuality is surely a wonderful and terrible thing.**

**And puberty is dark humor at its best.**

**Hope you agree.**

* * *

After his talk with Yamamoto, Gokudera turned his attention back to the screen and resumed watching the movie. However, he had only watched the movie for a couple of peaceful minutes before he realized that he had developed a problem.

Whether it was because he was too comfortable, or because he had just been talking about sex, or because he hadn't masturbated in a few days, he had an erection. He wasn't even turned on – the heterosexual romantic sappiness on the screen and the frequent feminine giggling from the girl groupies several rows down from where he was kept him from getting sexually interested in his mind, but the fact remained that his body was sporadically reacting and giving him a boner. This wasn't abnormal if he considered that he was still going through puberty and that his hormones surged cyclically through his body every once in a while to make sure that all his body parts were in working order. Knowing the biological reasons for why he had suddenly gotten an erection, however, didn't make it feel any less awkward when he had his two best friends sitting right beside him.

Having had this particular problem many times before at equally random intervals, Gokudera knew from experience that there was no cause for alarm. At any rate, because the theater lights were still down, it was dark and nobody would notice what his junk was getting up to. If he shifted his position a bit and didn't do anything to restrict the blood flow at his crotch or put pressure there, his erection would naturally go away as long as he just stayed calm.

Moving very quietly and slowly so that what he was doing wouldn't be noticed by Yamamoto, who was the closest to him, Gokudera sank down in his seat as low as he could and adjusted his boner to the side successfully. Now, all he had to do was keep cool and simply wait for a few minutes.

Unfortunately, with his luck, the credits for the movie started rolling on right then, meaning that the lights would come up in just a short while.

'Shit shit shit shit shit!' Gokudera chanted in his mind, panicking. Like him, the boys at his school got random erections all the time and joked about it, teasing each other about getting too excited in the classroom, but Gokudera really was not in a joking mood right at that moment in his agitated state.

'What fucking irony,' he thought, fisting his hands in the front pockets of his loose jeans so that the bulge he was sporting at his crotch wouldn't be as visible. 'I _just_ finish talking about how I won't do anything sexual in a movie theater and then I turn hypocrite and go and get hard two seconds later? This is just _perfect_! Fuck, what am I supposed to do?'

Gokudera knew that it was unlikely that either one of his two friends, or anyone else in the theater for that matter, would check out his crotch whether the lights were on or not, but he couldn't help feeling embarrassed and strangely exposed.

The main credits stopped scrolling and the lights flickered on.

'I need to make a quick getaway and dash for the restroom,' he decided, gripping the armrest in tensed mortification and grasping at the quickest available solution that he could think of.

"_Finally_ the movie's over!" he practically shouted, shooting up from his seat to stand before either Yamamoto or Tsuna could even stir from their seats. "Let's get _out_ of here!" It was truer for him than anyone else around him knew.

Gokudera turned, angling his hips away from his friends' view, and leapt down the seat aisle on the other side from which they had gone in, only too eager to get out of the theater before the others and escape to the restroom.

Yamamoto laughed at Gokudera's overt enthusiasm to put some distance between himself and the movie, or so he thought. "Hey, come back here and throw this away for me!" he called, waving his empty cup in the air and over his head. "You drank more of my coke than I did!"

"Exactly," retorted Gokudera, thinking of a handy excuse, his mouth going at the same fast pace that his feet were. "So now I need to go take a piss. Meet me outside the restroom, okay?" And with that, he bounded out the exit.

Shaking his head with his coke cup still in his hand, Yamamoto turned to Tsuna.

"He didn't like the movie too much," he explained. "But, uhm, how'd you like it?"

"I thought it was alright," Tsuna replied, checking that he still had his wallet in his back pocket and crumpling up his popcorn bag.

"It was okay, I guess."

The two scooted out of their row of seats the same way that Gokudera had gone and threw away their trash in the metal bins near the door on the way out. Going out through the same exit that Gokudera and nearly everyone else were using, they went a little into the hallway that led to the restrooms and waited for their friend outside as requested.

"You didn't like it too much either, did you? You guys were messing around during the movie," commented Tsuna, referring to the other conversation that the other two had had off to the side while the movie had been showing. "What were you talking about?"

"Oh, uh." Yamamoto let out an embarrassed laugh, a little reluctant to tell Tsuna what Gokudera and he had been conversing on. "We were talking about how people in the back row, like in the theater back there you know, make out and stuff during the movie. Gokudera said that he wouldn't want to do it because it's what everyone does and he thinks its cliché or whatever."

"Hmm. What did you say?"

"About the same." Yamamoto shrugged. "And you?"

Tsuna tilted his head. "I don't know. How far going are we talking about?"

"Uhm… Making out? Sex?"

"What? People have sex in the movie theater? Uhm, anyways, maybe making out a bit wouldn't be too bad, but not when there's people around. Not _sex_, though. Like, how would you even do it without getting _caught_? Wouldn't the people sitting next to you report you and complain?"

"That's what I said!" Yamamoto laughed, clapping the other boy on the shoulder. "Can you imagine how awkward it would be if you got caught? You'd be, like, _literally _caught with your pants down!"

"What happens if you _do_ get caught?" Tsuna asked. "Do you get arrested and taken to the police station or something?"

"I don't know. What would you get charged with if you were taken to the station? That seems a bit much, anyways. Wouldn't you just get banned from the theater or something? Or maybe you'd just get a warning." Then Yamamoto thought of something he had heard a long time ago and suddenly burst out into renewed laughter. "Did you know, in the old days before the internet," he gasped through his laughter, "that they used to have movie theaters for _porn_? Shit, what would they have done then? Like, _everyone_ in the theater would've been jerking it!"

Tsuna blushed but laughed shortly as well. "That sounds _majorly_ awkward," he said, shaking his head and face-palming. "All I'll say is thank god for the internet."

"You got that right," agreed Yamamoto, grinning.

But while he was smiling and carefree on the outside, inside Yamamoto was seriously wondering what boys like him would have done in the days before the internet. Would they have been forced to stay ignorant and abstinent? Would they have been filled with strange feelings of guilt, confused and horrified at the ways that their pubescent sexual organs were reacting to various stimuli? Would they have crept into the porn theaters, more surreptitiously and far more fearfully than the teenagers of today would ever sneak into the screening rooms of R-rated movies?

Yamamoto thought about how he watched porn. Because he didn't have his own computer and his house only had a desktop, he always had to wait until his dad was either still working at the restaurant or when he was absorbed in a TV program to download his porn onto his cell-phone. He thought about how, in the latter occasion, he locked the door quietly and angled the screen away from the door as much as he could, still paranoid that somehow his dad would manage to get in and that he'd be caught.

Later, in the dark of his bedroom and lying on his bed, he would get out his phone and fervently hope that he had remembered to delete the history and hadn't gotten any viruses on the shared computer before taking care of his business.

He felt certain that Tsuna, with his stay-at-home mom and always-at-work dad, similarly watched porn only on his phone because his house had a strict rule that the computers, even though there were two laptops, weren't allowed to leave the room that they were stationed in.

Yamamoto wondered what Gokudera did. Gokudera had a phone that could do virtually nothing except make calls and exchange texts, but he had a laptop that was more or less his personal private computer and had the house to himself most of the time. Gokudera was the one in their group who was the most casual about sexual topics, always quick to joke about sex and not seeming to find the subject uncomfortable, but Yamamoto thought that his behavior could suggest something else besides the obvious, besides just interest in sexuality.

'Does he just not _care_ too much about sex? I mean, sexual stuff must be on his mind a lot of the time, just like it is with all the rest of us, but does he just not see it as something very important or serious? Maybe that's why he's so casual about it.' Yamamoto remembered how Gokudera had reacted to the thought of making out in the theater and realized, with a slight feeling of surprise, that Gokudera's standards on sex were different, perhaps more complicated, than most others'.

Some giggly voices from the main area made Yamamoto break out of his thoughts and look out the hallway. Some girls, possibly members of the same groupies that had been in his screening room for _Secret Locker Notes_, were standing near a donut shop and talking gleefully with each other about something, probably the movie they had just watched.

'Do they know that none of that stuff is true?' he wondered. 'Or do they simply enjoy living in fairy-tale land?'

Yamamoto doubted that any of those girls in front of the donut shop would know that the only reason why any normal teenage boy, or at least the regular boys at his school, would want to dance and run around in the rain with a girl, like _Secret Locker Notes_ and all other mushy romantic movies were fond of showing, was so that he could get a good look at the girl's tits when her wet t-shirt stuck to her chest and became see-through.

He looked away from the girls and at Tsuna next to him. Tsuna was looking at the wall with a zoned-out expression, possibly thinking about nothing, possibly thinking about Kyoko. Yamamoto felt a little bit ashamed thinking in the way that he had while standing next to his wholesome friend, who seemed so incomprehensibly capable of constant affection that was not purely driven by sexual desire.

'Ah, but he's an exception," he comforted himself. '…. right?'

He knew that the way that he and Gokudera and most teenage boys thought about sexual things, their thought focus madly flitting around from one target to another, was the norm in that it was at least the majority opinion. The evident fact that his behavior was similar, if not the same, to the vast percentage of teenage boys everywhere seemed to suggest that he was in the 'right,' but what Tsuna and some other boys felt couldn't be called 'wrong.' If it came naturally, how 'right' or 'wrong' could something be said to be, anyways?

Yamamoto, turning to stare back at the restroom door and just wait for Gokudera, couldn't be sure if he was the normal one or if Tsuna was the normal one.

* * *

While his friends were waiting for him outside the restroom, Gokudera had his back flat against the inside of the stall wall, trying to calm down. Maybe because he had had a moment of alarm that had made his heart rate rise and put his blood pressure up, his problem seemed to be taking longer than usual to solve itself.

'What the hell? I thought I was over this stage already! Shouldn't my hormones have calmed down enough by this point that this sort of shit shouldn't be happening?' He had his pants fly down, trying to get his crotch to breathe, and bit back a cuss word of surprise when someone tried to open the locked door of his stall without knocking to check for an occupant.

Thankfully, after a few minutes in which Gokudera just stared at the toilet bowl in front of him, carefully keeping his mind away from anything sexual, his hormones regulated themselves and his erection went away.

'Thank god,' he thought, as he tucked himself back in his pants and zipped his fly up. 'I was beginning to think that I would have to jerk one out in the stall with random dudes taking a dump on either side of me. I may have had sex in the middle of a city park, but that was a one-time thing, god _damn_ it, and I am really not _that _low as to jerk off in a fucking mall restroom.'

Putting down the lid and flushing the unused toilet to keep up appearances, Gokudera went out of the stall, and walked to the where the sinks were.

'This is what happens if you don't take care of yourself,' he told himself in an annoyed but relieved mental tone now that his minor crisis had been averted. As he washed his hands cursorily, he made a mental note to masturbate later at his house and rejoined his friends outside the restroom.

"That movie was _so_ bad," he said, easily joining the other two now that he didn't have his embarrassing problem anymore. He hooked his thumbs in his pants pockets jauntily. "It was the most boring thing I've ever seen. That was such a waste of money!"

Yamamoto glanced at Tsuna, who was pouting, and started snickering. When Gokudera was around with his loud and opinionated ways, it was easy to forget about his feelings and let go of his worries for at least a short while. "Hey, lay off, would ya? Tsuna sort of liked it. And besides, you _know_ you loved the scene when they were all over each other at the lockers. I saw ya looking," he teased.

"Like _hell_ you did," said Gokudera as the three walked down the short hallway and back into the main floor of the mall. "That was the worst scene in the movie. It was just torture to watch; it was just so _fake_. You know that shit _never_ happens in real life, anyways. And what was up with poking those notes through the ventilator slits on the locker doors? That's, like, stalking or something!"

Yamamoto tilted his head towards the girls who were still ambling around the donut shop. "I bet those girls wouldn't mind if some guy did that to them. Or is it _for_ them?" He laughed and shrugged.

Gokudera saw where he was looking and scoffed dismissively. "Yeah well, girls," he said, apparently not holding girls, or at least not the ones in front of the shop, in very high personal regard. "They're dreamers, the lot of them."

He paused to rethink his own words and then frowned.

"Not that there's anything inherently wrong with being a dreamer or anything like that," he quickly added, a bit more charitably, "But they'll only get let down if they expect a knight in shining armor or whatever-the-fuck-it-is that they want to come along and treat them all nice and perfect. That's just being delusional."

"Delusional? That's being a little harsh, don't you think?" put in Tsuna, their group's resident romantic. "Yeah, maybe what they want won't come true exactly the way they want it, but what's wrong with just wanting what they want? I once heard that you shouldn't live the way that things actually _are_, but the way that things _should_ be. And that's what they're doing. What's wrong with that?" he asked again.

Gokudera narrowed his eyes in contemplation and looked to the far end of the mall as he kept on walking with the others. He seemed to have been struck a little speechless. Seeing how Gokudera was very slightly scrunching up his face as he thought of a reply, Yamamoto suddenly thought that Gokudera had once been a bit of a small private dreamer, but had been come into hard reality when he had been secretly let down, both by the world and by himself, one too many times.

"But…" The tone of Gokudera's voice was slightly pleading, but far from defeated. Then he turned to Tsuna almost challengingly, his voice as firm and certain as his gaze and his steps. "It makes _no sense_ to live in a way that's not true. Why do it? Okay, so maybe I was a bit over the top to use the word 'delusional,' but my basic point still stands: reality is just the set way that things are. You can go against it if you _like_, but..." Gokudera raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Uhm, anyways," cut Yamamoto into the debate before the other two could get anywhere close to arguing, "But who's to say that the things people want can't happen? Yeah, life doesn't really happen that often like it does in the movies, if ever, but, I mean, it's not a physical impossibility. Who knows? It just might happen!" he said optimistically, trying to be all-around supportive.

Gokudera laughed, loosening up. "Alright, sure," he said, grinning at both his friends in an amused way. "I'll give you that. It just might happen. It _could_ happen, I suppose. I just don't get why anyone would want that sort of stuff, that's all." He laughed again. "But then again, there's just a lot of stuff that I don't get."

"Like… what?" asked Tsuna after a hesitation. "Like with emotional stuff?"

"Yeah. Sort of. Like, I don't get the couples at our school. I mean, I guess they're alright and all and they seem to be happy enough, but it's just not personally my thing. It's just so…" Gokudera waved his hand vaguely in the air as he thought of the word. "… so generic."

"What do you mean?"

"Like…Well, it's about girls again," The silver-haired boy said awkwardly, putting his hands in his pockets, "But, like, have you ever noticed, when you walk through the hallways, how all the girls, and I mean, like _all_ of them, who are dating someone sort of do this puckering-up thing to their dates and just wait to be kissed?"

"Yeah, I guess. And so?"

"Well, doesn't that look a bit weird to you? It's pathetic!" exclaimed Gokudera, raising his hands up slightly palms out. "God_damn_, if you want to be kissed that much, don't just stand there like an idiot and _wait_ to be kissed! You have to _take_ what you want! Isn't it obvious?"

"Well, I think that that's what the _guys_ are already doing," Yamamoto said, grinning "But I get your point with the girls. So do you think that they should have more initiative or whatever?"

"Uhm…" Gokudera couldn't think about the girls anymore. He was thinking, once again as in an unsettling dream, about the hustler. "Let me think."

'Did I not kiss the hustler because I lacked the initiative to do so?' Gokudera questioned, feeling entirely uncertain. There was an unrelenting uneasiness that he felt developing inside of him that was growing more and more intense. It felt something like pain. 'But wasn't I being assertive enough in approaching him in the first place?' he desperately asked himself. 'Wasn't that enough?'

Although he was physically under the shining mall lights, mentally he was back in the park clearing, night wind whistling about the trees and the hustler's unforgettably gorgeous head on his shoulder as it had five days ago; only five days ago, a whole five days ago ("Try to live normal" – 7. Chapter 7). His hand, shaking very slightly on his uncertainly bent arm, was reaching out to stroke the wonderfully-mussed dark hair that was _right there_. He wanted to believe that he was trembling because of the cold or because of the thrill or because of the sexual pleasure; because of anything that wasn't the truth that he was simply scared out of his wits. The way that the clearly experienced hustler was making him feel was incredible, and somewhere in the blurry haze of pleasure, Gokudera knew that he wanted to take the hustler's head in his hands and kiss him hard. But unlike his erection, which had been an involuntary reaction, kissing took conscious action that he wasn't sure if he wanted to take.

Before he could get over his silent fear that the hustler would turn his face away and pull back if he tried to kiss him, his body once again took over his head and he was clutching at the hustler's back with his eyes shut, his mind blown and his chance gone. Gokudera hadn't thought about kissing the hustler again until it was already too late and the man who had given him _almost_ everything that he wanted had already gone out of his life.

"Uhm," the conflicted adolescent said again, fighting his feeling of regret. "Yeah, I think so. But… I think it's more than just initiative that's needed." he said, coming to a slow realization.

Gokudera went back into his memory, back to the time when he had been at the school bleachers next to the football field ("Try to live normal" – 10. Chapter 10). He had stressed the importance of taking what he wanted then, as well.

'But what does that really mean? To take what I want? What do I need to do to be able to do that? Does it mean that I don't think about it, that I just reach out for it and just… _take_ it?' Gokudera had been too focused on the object of his desires when he had been at the park with the hustler to just think about his desire then, but he was now. 'Wanting something – is that initiative in itself?'

His head felt too muddled, perhaps with other thoughts, perhaps because of his hormones, perhaps due to the colorful flash and the noise of the mall that he was in, to keep on thinking so seriously. But the questions that he had, the little flecks of stress and emotion and abstractness, whirled around under the curve of his crania.

What did taking what he wanted mean? Did it have to be offered to him first for him to take it? But then how could that be described as taking if he had to passively wait for the offer to be made to him, if what he wanted was as good as already given to him before he could act?

Yamamoto had said to him that he was assertive, and he had accepted it at the time with only a little bit of internal protest. Now, Gokudera realized, the unbidden realization just settling down on him, that he had accepted it, that he had believed it, simply because he had wanted to.

'Being assertive doesn't mean that just the initial step has to be taken to kick-start things on their natural course. There _is_ no natural course; things do _not_ just simply fall into place. There _is_ no set order that things just are. I have to fight every step of the way to make things happen. Initiative isn't, and wasn't, enough.'

He had just been lucky with the hustler to get almost everything that he had wanted and only feel this small amount of regret – the next time, he would have to work harder to get complete satisfaction. It was both formidable and empowering to think that he had to work every step of the way to get anything that he wanted. The dilemma facing the hallway girls who limply puckered their lips up into the air toward their boyfriends might be a minor one, but it was still a dilemma. The girls had already taken the initiative to position themselves ready to receive a kiss. Now, they and Gokudera had to keep their eyes open and take a chance.

"Okay," said Yamamoto. "So then what else is needed besides initiative?"

Gokudera had no idea how he was ever going to explain all or any of what he had just felt, and didn't think that he wanted to. All the thinking had worn him out and his mind felt so smoothed over with a gloss of exertion that his brain could barely even summon up the wrinkles to think of something to say as a reply. He wanted to keep his realization to himself, keep it _for_ himself and nurture it for a little while longer, but yet, just like he felt with the park clearing, he also felt that it was meant to be shared.

"I guess… Confidence." That was the simplest way that he could think of to summarize his revelation into one word. "Just a bit of self-confidence."

* * *

Gokudera's revelation in the mall stayed with him, a faint pressure on his mind, long after Tsuna had gone to his home and Yamamoto had gone to meet separately with his project group members and he himself had arrived at his own house. It was late at night but he wasn't sleepy yet so he was just flitting through the Web for lack of anything else to do.

Lying on his bed stomach-down with the lights out and the door closed, Gokudera couldn't say that he was exactly living his revelation although he wasn't edging away from it either. At the moment, at least, he didn't feel particularly confident or unconfident either way. He mostly felt a nothingness that he mistook for boredom as he aimlessly surfed the internet.

'Ah, might as well,' he thought, before x-ing out of the online Tetris game that he had been playing on a whim and pausing the YouTube song video that he had been listening to. He went to Google and typed what he wanted in the search bar. Instantly, an almost endless listing of pornography websites appeared on his screen.

He clicked on the first website at the very top.

The site opened and lot of rectangular video teasers came up, all boxed in together in a grid-like formation with titles and other text written in small print at the bottom of each of the individual video boxes. As far as he could tell from the limited descriptions and from looking at the teasers, all the material on the site was straight porn, centered on some type of male-female interaction whether the sex was vanilla, kinky, three-way, or whatever.

Nonetheless, this didn't really deter Gokudera, who was looking less for a good time than he was to just get off, and he arbitrarily clicked on one of the boxes.

Because he didn't want to risk getting viruses on his computer from downloading and he had a fairly short attention span when it came to surfing the internet, he nearly always streamed short hard-core clips that lasted for only a couple of minutes and which got down to serious business almost immediately. This time was no different.

He kicked off his pants and rolled onto his side while pushing down his boxers and looking at the screen.

The first thing he felt about the video he was watching was, 'Well, that's boring.'

The focus of the video was explicit, if the sex itself was rather bland in Gokudera's opinion. From the first second, the clip showed a woman and a man who were quite obviously in the middle of fucking. There were no clothes anywhere in sight, not even on the floor or thrown about anywhere else in the room that the camera sometimes zoomed out to show, which somewhat distracted Gokudera because he couldn't help wondering where the clothes were. The woman had breasts that were each about the size of her own head and was lying down with her back slightly arched on a ratty couch which had no extra cushions. The couch was high and narrow and Gokudera thought that she probably would have been in danger of falling off if there had been any cushions to take up what little space there was. The woman had one foot on the ground with her thigh parallel to the floor and had her other leg entirely hanging off the couch armrest with her stomach muscles clenching and her crotch pushed up into the air. The man was standing at the armrest and thrusting into her as per usual in these types of videos.

There was barely any noise besides the couch creaking for the first few minutes, in which Gokudera found himself getting less and less mentally interested even while he was physically stimulating himself with no help from the porn showing on his computer screen. Impatient with the way that things were going, he skipped ahead in the video, trying to find the part where the camera would inevitably show only the crotches making contact.

Finding the types of parts in the video that he was interested in, Gokudera only managed to watch it for a minute or so before the camera panned back away and zoomed a little out again. The porn stars had, by this point, advanced from hard breathing to actually using their vocal cords.

Gokudera didn't know what was more funny or disturbing – that the man was almost entirely silent and expressionless or that the woman was moaning and even shrieking at seemingly random intervals. Although the man's impassive reaction seemed a little odd, it wasn't anything particularly different from the way that he himself reacted to sexual pleasure, so it didn't really bother him. What really shot down his libido was the woman.

'What the hell is she _doing_?' he thought, feeling more than a trifle horrified.

He started at the screen. It wasn't like he was new to porn or hadn't heard faked moaning before, but what the woman was doing seemed to be some type of extreme lip contortion. She was making a noise that was best described as squealing like a strangled animal with every thrust, which was just ridiculous.

Although he full-well knew that porn wasn't like actual sex and that the woman was completely faking, he couldn't help think, 'Is that what women _do_, when they have sex?' Whatever the average woman actually did when they had sex, what the woman on the screen was doing was terrifying, so Gokudera hastily x-ed out of the website.

'Do straight guys _like _that sort of crazy creepy-ass shit?' he wondered, thoroughly freaked-out and thinking back to the other porn videos that he had seen in the past.

Because porn didn't really make any lasting impact on him although it was a fairly steady part of his life and he watched it pretty frequently, he couldn't remember for sure if any of the other clips he had watched had had a similar squealer. But he thought that the girls in the other videos had all at least made some moaning noises.

'Why do they make noises like that? Is it because they really feel _that_ good? I know that most of them just fake it, but in real life, there must be people who actually do it or everyone wouldn't have started fucking _copying_ it,' he thought a little disgustedly. 'But it's not like guys don't feel good when they have sex and they don't make those noises. I mean, all _I_ really do is just breathe hard and that's basically what all the guys in the videos do as well.'

Now that he had closed the porn website, he was back on the Google search listing page. Gokudera could have clicked on or looked up other types of porn that were more to his taste, but he was still feeling creeped-out enough from what he had just seen that any type of porn didn't sound too appealing to him right at that moment, no matter how bored or horny he still was.

He looked at the time that was at the bottom right corner of his computer screen. It was past midnight, and even though he wasn't sleepy, he knew that staying up for longer wouldn't be a brilliant idea on a school night. Closing his laptop, he put it on the floor and threw his jeans off his bed and onto his dresser.

Since he was still half-erect, he decided that he would wash up for bed quickly before finishing business. He speed-brushed his teeth, made sure that his alarm was on, and got under the covers.

As he jerked off, Gokudera kept his mind free and clear from any thoughts and just focused on his physicality. Sometimes he closed his eyes and sometimes he kept them open without really taking in what he was seeing, and sometimes he shifted his position to get more comfortable, but all the while he was masturbating, he felt in control of his body, which was all that he was really asking for.

When he came, it was routine: it felt good but wasn't mind-blowing, and Gokudera felt satisfied as he fell asleep.

* * *

**This chapter was not meant to be pornographic. After all, there was nothing particularly graphic, I don't think.**

**Writing about sexuality is one of my favorite things to do, precisely because a lot of it just makes no sense.**

**Hope all of you had good sex-ed classes. If not, hope this story helps.**

**(If any of you thought that this was a bit much, please tell me and I'll take it into consideration.)**

**Review, please.**


	16. Chapter 16

**Again, incredibly sorry for the delay.**

**I have a load of quite valid excuses, but I won't bore you with them.**

**But anyways...**

* * *

Tsuna's mother opened the window and let the cold air blow in*, executing the last part of what had been the series of attempts to wake up her son for school.

"Come on, Tsuna, _get up_!" she cried exasperatedly. "Up to what time did you play your computer games last night? Get _up_!"

Groaning, and feeling extremely reluctant, not to mention still sleepy, despite his mother flicking his room light on and off and ripping his sheets off the bed, Tsuna sat up groggily, blinking his eyes blearily.

"_Thank_ you!" his mother said. "Now come on and wash your face and brush your teeth. You'll have to eat breakfast as you go to school."

The just awoken boy stumbled into the bathroom as his mother went to the kitchen to make him scrambled eggs and toast. After he had washed up and as while he was putting on the first ensemble of long-sleeved shirt, pants, and hoodie that didn't look completely mismatched, his mother came into his room with a plastic Ziploc-bag that had the scrambled eggs sandwiched in between the freshly-made toast inside.

"Here you go," she said, putting the Ziploc bag of breakfast on top of Tsuna's backpack when Tsuna didn't bother to take it. She looked at what her son was wearing. "Put on a thicker jacket than that. The temperature'll drop today and it'll get colder. That won't be enough."

Grumbling unintelligibly, Tsuna picked up his breakfast, slinging his pre-packed backpack over his shoulders, and walked out of his room to make for the front door, pointedly not switching his hoodie for something else.

"You're going to be cold!" his mother half-exclaimed and half-scolded, following him to the front door. "Get another sweatshirt!"

Tsuna shook his head as he shoved on his shoes. "I'll be okay," he muttered.

"You'll be okay?" the mother repeated in disbelief. She would have pressed the issue if her son was not already running dangerously close to being late. As it was, the late-riser had one foot already out the open door so she gave up. "Well, don't blame if you get cold. Have a good day!" she called after him.

"Bye," Tsuna said tonelessly, starting to speed-walk to school, and taking out his still warm scrambled egg sandwich and eating it as he went.

Luckily, he arrived at school on time and his first period of class went uneventfully. Between periods, there was a break that was usually five minutes long to allow for visits to the lockers or quick restroom usages, but after first period there was a unique fifteen minute break during which a snack booth run by the student council sold candy bars and chips and drinks in front of the atrium. Tsuna didn't want to buy anything in particular, but he made his way to the atrium to mingle with the other kids because that's what everyone did and it was better than sitting in an empty classroom for little over ten minutes.

As he had hoped, he met his friends near the atrium.

Yamamoto was standing at the bulletin board directly opposite the hallway from the snack bar, scanning the daily notifications with his eyes. When Tsuna went up to him, he looked to see who was next to him and flashed a smile.

"Oh hey," Yamamoto said, reasonably glad but not ecstatic to see his friend, who, after all, he saw every day.

"Hey," replied Tsuna. "Anything on the bulletin?"

"Nah." Yamamoto glanced over what was on the snack, decided as usual that he didn't want anything, and looked back to the board. "It says some sophomore kid lost his phone, but that's the only new thing, basically."

The two boys reading the bulletin felt simultaneous quick taps on their shoulders.

It was Gokudera.

"Hey!" said Yamamoto, nudging the last edition to their group friendlily. "You normally don't come to the snack bar," he commented, using his friend as an armrest.

"Thought I'd just come down for once," Gokudera said, pulling back his bangs and grinning. He spoke to both his friends. "Hey, you guys psyched for the presentations?"

"Yeah right," snorted Tsuna. "Anyways, doesn't matter now, does it? It's only just after this next period."

"Yeah," Yamamoto added. "I really need to do well on it; I need to pull my grade up for this quarter."

"Well, you met with your group yesterday, didn't you? You'll be okay," Gokudera reassured him. "If you're not feeling sure, you can just review this coming period."

Yamamoto shook his head. "I can't. I have to do a lab next period. And my group, we just sort of bummed around, you know? Well, whatever, I'm sure it'll work out well enough." He glanced up at the digital clock that was hanging on the wall above the bulletin board. It was a couple of minutes before classes resumed. "We'd better go."

"You're right, we'd better," Gokudera agreed, looking at his wristwatch. He lowered his voice and nudged Tsuna. "Don't mess up in front of Kyoko, eh?" he teased before whirling around and bounding up the stairs to get to his class.

Yamamoto snickered at the parting words and at Tsuna's flustered reaction to them. "See you third period," he said to his remaining friend before going to his own class.

* * *

* "Roll down the window and let the cold air blow in, yeah" is a lyric from _Jimmy Eat World_'s song "Carry You." It's a pretty damn good song – I like it and would recommend it.

* * *

Come third period, Yamamoto and Tsuna went in their history classroom where all the students had already grouped themselves together in their appropriate groups and were getting ready for their presentations.

Kyoko, as the most trustworthy and reputably responsible person in Tsuna's group, had been assigned and had completed the task of printing out the hand-outs that were a required part of the presentation.

Tsuna's group was among the first groups to present. They did well, the teacher nodding in what seemed to be a positive way several times as they clicked through their PowerPoint and made what use of their limitedly allowed notecards that they had. Not extremely concerned about his academic status as average in the class, Tsuna was mostly concerned about not stuttering in front of the others and Kyoko, and was just relieved that he hadn't stumbled over his words when he successfully presented his part.

When some other groups had gone and the teacher motioned for Yamamoto's group to go up, one of the members hooked up his computer to the school projector system and brought up the group's Prezi on the pull-down screen.

Because they each had near completely individual parts that they had split-up, Yamamoto just stood to the side of the screen quietly and looked around the class as he waited his turn, which was in the middle.

The school he was at was competitive, one of the more private public schools in the area, and most everyone was looking up and down rapidly in quick jerks of the head as they dutifully wrote notes.

Yamamoto noted with a touch of amusement, although he hid his smile, that the more listless-looking boys perked up a bit when a picture of a working peasant girl came up on the screen. The peasant girl was wearing very shabby clothes and had on a serious, perhaps tired or even sad expression, but the curve of her figure was evident and shabby or not shabby, she received a fair amount of interest from the male populace in the class. Yamamoto saw a couple of the boys exchange knowing smirks about the girl and restrained a smirk of his own about the boys.

When it neared his part in the Prezi, he glanced over his notes one more time before he took the clicker controller and presented. Only glancing at his notecards a few times for prompts, which was perfectly acceptable, Yamamoto felt that he had spoken fairly smoothly and that he would have gotten a high score.

Feeling comfortable and relieved, he again retreated to the side of the screen and observed the behavior of the non-presenters in the class.

As a casual game, he tried to tell what the people on the first two rows were looking at. Some of them, he noticed, were focusing a little more on the current presenter, who was a busty girl named Adelheid, than what she was presenting.

'Hmm, I wonder what he's looking at,' Yamamoto thought sarcastically, full-well knowing the answer already, as he followed the line of sight of Katou Julie, who was almost directly seated in front of Adelheid. Sure enough, unlike some of the other members in the class who were rather pointlessly staring at her mouth as she presented, Katou was staring a little below Adelheid's face at her chest.

'Seriously. I mean, I _know_ that this is what guys our age just do, but he doesn't have to be so intense about it,' Yamamoto thought, glancing over some of the other guys in the class who were also looking at the presenter's chest. 'He's staring at them with every other word he writes like he thinks her tits are going to blow up and pop or something.'

Yamamoto thought about how he sometimes looked at other people. He didn't do it very often now, although he had used to do it a lot more during his early teenage years. He remembered how he had snuck secret glances at girls' chests or butts and snuck even more stealthy glances at the crotches of the boys in the locker room. But those looks had been motivated by curiosity more than anything else.

'When I look, I'm usually thinking something like, 'Huh, so that's how they look. How do they compare to me?' but it's obvious that Katou's not thinking anything like that. He's undressing her with his eyes.'

Shrugging in a minute gesture to himself, Yamamoto looked away from Katou Julie and decided to let the matter go. It wasn't anything new and there wasn't anything he could do about it anyway.

His group's presentation ended and Yamamoto went back his seat. Seeing how the other boys looked at certain things or people, and thinking of how he looked at people had reminded him of the subway game. And the subway game reminded him of Gokudera.

'The only time I've ever seen him look at people with specific intent was in the subway, and that wasn't sexual at all. But surely he must look at people that he's interested in? I mean, even Tsuna looks at Kyoko pretty regularly when he thinks he won't be caught and Gokudera's a teenager just like all the rest of us so he must do it at least sometimes. But I can't think of any time when he… Ah.'

A memory suddenly surfaced in Yamamoto's mind, a memory that stood out.

There had been that one time when Gokudera had suddenly stopped and whirled around in the middle of the street, abruptly cutting out of the line of conversation, to look at something ("Try for Normality" – 3. Chapter 3). It had been strange how he had been so intensely focused on what he had seen or thought he had seen; Yamamoto realized that he had no idea what Gokudera had been looking at because he hadn't said.

It had been abnormal for Gokudera to not reveal what it was that he had been so taken with. He seemed to think pretty highly of himself most of the time and rather liked sharing his thoughts and opinions – Yamamoto might have thought of him as cocky if Gokudera wasn't one of his closest friends and if the silver-haired boy wasn't always just that randomly self-deprecating enough of himself that he never quite reached that point – and it really was quite curious that he had been so close-mouthed at that time.

Whatever it had been that Gokudera had felt the need to stop everything else to focus on, Yamamoto felt sure that it had something to do with a type of person that Gokudera really _liked_.

* * *

At lunchtime, the three met at their normal table.

Something about the tired aura of Monday afternoon made them communicate mostly through vague nods and only comment in short bursts; the other boys around them also were focusing mostly on their school food although there wasn't anything exceptional about what they had on their trays.

Gokudera had his head turned a little away from the group, listening to something about an upcoming quiz or a quiz result – he couldn't tell which because he'd only started listening in the middle – that his peers were complaining good-naturedly about. He suddenly jerked his head back to his group.

"That reminds me," he said, turning to Tsuna. "How'd your project go?"

Tsuna immediately brightened. "Oh, it went great!" he exclaimed through half a mouthful of food and tapped his spoon on his tray in excitement as he swallowed. "I think I did really well!"

"Okay, someone's happy," Gokudera quipped, slightly raising his eyebrows but offering a quick smile. "And you?" He jerked his thumb at Yamamoto.

"I think I did alright."

"Good, good." Now that he had finished his cursory check-up on his friends, Gokudera turned back to the side to see what the other boys at his table were doing.

He watched the movements of the boys' mouths rather than listening to their words. The subject of their conversation, trivial every-day things related to school or sports or parents, didn't interest him. What did interest him were the little ways that their faces and necks and shoulders and bodies differed from one another and breathed and vibrated in tiny moments.

Even though it was common sense to know that nobody looked exactly alike, Gokudera couldn't help glancing over the other boys and feeling a mix of mild surprise and interest at how each boy looked unique in from the next. He had outgrown the early-pubescent stage of looking at others to simply compare with himself, but there was still something of that physically self-conscious feeling remaining as he looked now. The feeling came with exploring his sexual interests as he slid his dark eyes over the other boys.

'He would probably be a lot better-looking if he lost a bit of weight. Has an okay personality too, but I don't know much about him. And _he_'s pretty hot, quite a bit taller than me and really lean, does swimming I think, but I know jack shit about him besides that. And…'

Gokudera skipped his gaze past the boys who didn't interest him and looked to the next table.

'That's the slacker group, but damn, they're not half bad!

Even if given the chance, Gokudera would never have seriously dated any of the people that he was looking at – he was open to casual affairs, but very little else – but it was fun to glance over the goods that were in sight but not in reach like it was sometimes fun to window-shop without a wallet to fuss about.

The 'slacker group' was making quite a bit of noise, playing group rock-paper-scissor matches to see who would be the unlucky 'it' for the day who would have to take all the others' lunch trays to the disposal area. Gokudera watched them with an amused smile. The one who eventually lost all the rounds let out a shout of mock-dismay and slapped his palms down on the table as the others snickered and thumped him on the back. While the others mulled around, the 'it' boy stacked the five or six plastic trays.

The "it' boy hardly had any classes with Gokudera, but Gokudera knew him to be a regular guy who, while single and apparently not a catch in the point of view of the female population of the school, was far above average in his opinion. The boy was at least a little date-able.

'About my height, give or take, light hair like me.' Gokudera cataloged the boy in his mind. 'Pity he's a bit stupid, but he smiles easily and I like that. Sort of faux-hawk hairstyle.'

Knowing that it would never happen didn't stop Gokudera from entertaining, and thoroughly enjoying, the image he had in his head of throwing the boy up against a wall, any vertical surface, and pulling at that hair while making out with its owner. It wasn't personal or affectionate, just something fun to do that would feel good, and Gokudera was perfectly comfortable with that.

The boy, oblivious to anyone casually fantasizing about him, picked up the trays that he had balanced precariously into a stack and went to put them away. After the boy and his textured hair was out of sight, Gokudera looked at his tray and smirked down at it while running his fingers through his own hair.

'This doesn't make me a hair-fetishist, does it?' He smirked harder at his thought and minutely shook his head at himself. 'But fucking hell, it seems like I really _like_ that type of messy hairstyle.'

Because he'd jerked out a few in quick succession the last night, his hormones weren't so quick to start surging, and so while he was mentally thinking about sexual things, he wasn't turned on physically and his body didn't react. It was fantastic, he felt, to be able to envision such vivid scenarios in his mind that he would never speak about to his friends or even speak aloud at all and still be sitting by them, looking as innocent and plain as ever.

When he looked up, he met eyes with Yamamoto.

And immediately stopped smirking.

If the boy directly in front of him had simply been glancing at him, Gokudera would not have had a problem with continuing to smirk to his heart's content, but something about the way that Yamamoto was holding the same constant line of vision as he was with a straight face suggested that the other boy had been staring for some time. That made him stop. Gokudera cleared his throat a little awkwardly, vaguely hoping that what he'd been thinking hadn't been showing on his face.

"Uhm..." Gokudera flicked his bangs out of the way. "What's up?"

Yamamoto wanted to ask him what he'd been looking at, but was too afraid of getting a noncommittal answer like the last time he had asked the same question. He hesitated, and then shook his head.

"Uh... Nothing. You done?"

"...Sure."

The three, as they were in the habit of doing in the lunch activity period, went outside to the football field without debate on destination.

Like Tsuna's mother had said earlier that day, the weather really was quite cold and combined with wind-chill, the temperature felt like it had dropped quite a bit since the weekend. There were slightly fewer boys in the field than usual, but there were still the smokers and still the football players and it was generally the same as always.

After sitting for a bit around the bleacher steps, Gokudera noticed that Yamamoto was looking out in the field with a particular expression. He wasn't watching the game so much as the players. The expression he had was quietly interested and didn't betray any deep thought – he could just as well have been thinking about the soccer ball dribbling technique in front of him or anything else in the world or nothing at all.

"You want to go play?" Gokudera tapped his zoned-out friend with the back of his hand and gestured outwards.

"Mhm. Kinda. Come with?"

Gokudera shook his head and laughed. "I get hit in the face every time I play that damn sport. I don't know how it happens; it just does. Besides, I suck at playing anyways. I'll go with you on the field and just watch from close-up, if that's okay."

"Okay." Yamamoto leapt up and Gokudera followed a little behind, beckoning for Tsuna to come along to be considerate.

Soon enough, Yamamoto was kicking around the soccer ball with the others and Gokudera and Tsuna were standing just a little off the area of action. The wind seemed to turn on and off at random intervals, sometimes blowing fast and swirly and sometimes hardly stirring the air.

Gokudera pulled his bangs out of his face and held them there with his hand as he started wandering around on the field grass, away from all the others. He couldn't recall when he had lost interest in the game and gotten captivated by his surroundings, but like getting suddenly hit on the head by a ball, it had just happened. Simple observations drifted through his mind.

'The whole campus looks a bit clearer around the edges; probably because the sky got so clear since the monsoon winds came. The wind's not blowing as hard as it was a second ago, but it's still sorta cold, but it's a nice type of cold. Higher up, the wind-speed must be higher; the trees up over there are rustling like crazy.'

Something about having the quick pounding footsteps and shouts of excitement of the soccer players as background noise with the wind brushing at his hair and having the cold outdoors air in his lungs made him feel very clean. Besides the level of openness, both spatial and mental, the setting around him gave him the same feeling as did the park clearing: a feeling of complete ownership.

Gokudera stopped holding his hair in place and let the air move him however it liked. He tried to follow the air currents and spun around on one foot slowly. Then he spun around again, a bit faster with his arms stretched out.

He knew he looked more than a little silly spinning around like a ten year old kid, and it was a little embarrassing to be displaying this sort of private inside joke to himself to all the other kids out on the field, but at the same time that he knew that he might be judged as weird, he spun all the faster. If the others thought he was weird, so be it – at least they would know that he was unafraid of being called weird.

The way that he spun around was not graceful – it was untrained and unrestrained and haphazard and free. Instead of letting the wind blow at him, he whipped at the air, creating his own hurricane with him and only him in the center. When he started to lose his balance, he let himself fall, closing his eyes and collapsing down. With the ground so hard and bumpy and cold under his back and through his clothes, just like it had been with the hustler, the discomfort was like a reminder that he was very much alive even if he had hardly lived yet. He felt very much present in the world and somehow entirely empty and wholly himself at the same time.

"Gokudera! Oh my god, are you alright?"

Several of the nearby soccer players as well as Tsuna ran towards him, shouting in chorus, but Gokudera didn't open his eyes until he could sense them standing about him. It was only when he could hear their breathing hovering a meter or so from his face that he blinked up at them and put his hands under his head for support as he smiled brusquely skywards.

"I'm fine. Really."

His private moment gone, he tried to wave them away with his hands, and the others, taking him for his word, nodded uncertainly or acceptingly and left him alone, but not Yamamoto. Yamamoto kept on obstinately holding out his hand to help him up.

Gokudera naturally started to reach up to take the proffered hand, but then paused and pulled back. Without knowing entirely why, he sighed and shook his head. To him, it felt less like he had rejected an offer of support than that he had simply established his own autonomy. He let his hand fall back down.

Daniel huffed in annoyance and shifted on his feet.

"C'mon, you can't just lie there forever! Why don'tcha wanna get up? C'mon, it's about time for us to get going anyways."

When Gokudera didn't react in any way, it was Yamamoto's turn to sigh.

'My geez, he always picks the most random moments to do random stuff like this,' he thought, looking at the boy lying flat on the ground in front of him, trying to figure him out. 'He was like this at that place in the park, too.'

Although he had no clue what his friend was doing, Yamamoto knew for sure that he didn't want to experience the same sense of being suddenly abandoned or kicked-out or whatever Gokudera had done to him at the park. Bending down, he took his currently-limp but forever-unpredictable friend around the chest and hauled him to a sitting position. He crouched down next to Gokudera, who was still unresponsive, and shook him tentatively by one shoulder.

"Seriously, this is just... It's not okay. You must not be feeling well. This isn't like you."

"I'm not sick. And what would you know what I'm like?" Gokudera muttered under his breath while adjusting his shirt and getting Yamamoto's hand off his shoulder. His voice was very quiet and low, a mere hum underlying the wind.

"What?" Yamamoto leaned in closer. His thick short-cropped hair, totally unlike Gokudera's, was barely moving in the wind.

Gokudera realized a little dully in a unbidden line of thought that although he had played with Tsuna's long hair before, he had never touched Yamamoto's. The way that his hair was so short and close to his head made it seem like it was within some personal boundary that shouldn't be crossed unless permission was given. Gokudera ran his fingers through his own hair again, just to appreciate the pleasant feeling and to quit contrasting himself with other people. He shook his head. His mind was still blank from his recent collapse.

"Nothin'. I said I'm getting up."

Putting his hand on Yamamoto's shoulder like the other boy had done with him a few moments ago, Gokudera used his friend as a crutch and got up by himself.

* * *

**This chapter was very... quiet. ("quiet" = euphemism for "boring")**

**I'll get more into emotions next chapter. **

**I was thinking of either writing in a serious conversation about what it means to like someone/ to just play around with someone, or to write in a (verbal) fight. Which do you prefer? Tell me down below.**

**Review, please.**


	17. Chapter 17

**As a means of apology as to why this chapter was so damned late, I will give you a bit of personal information about myself.**

**I have this mental condition known as alexithymia, and this condition, when it spikes, makes me quite incapable of understanding, empathizing, or even feeling emotion. As you might have already assumed, this condition spiked rather hard recently and made it very near impossible to write anything because I simply had no idea what the characters might be feeling.**

**So if this chapter is a bit confused, please excuse me. I'm trying to combat the alexithymia, but it's not easy. I basically just had to do a whole lot of guesswork in determining what the characters' emotions are/ were.**

**I hope all you "normal" people out there will understand and that you will, hopefully, not be too disappointed by this chapter.**

* * *

After Monday classes were mercifully over, the three got out of their mutually shared math class together and went up to the third floor where all the junior lockers were.

Because teacher conference meetings were held after-school on Mondays, there wasn't any sports practice for anyone and so the three leisurely moved around the school, glad that they could now leave the school grounds but in no hurry to rush off to anywhere.

Although Gokudera never used his locker, he went up the stairs to wait in the hallway as always while he waited for his friends to rifle through their things. The hallway was bustling, full of students just like them who were lounging from one point to another without any definitive purpose besides getting out of their immediate current location. He leaned on a part of hallway wall that wasn't covered by locker sheet metal and mindlessly waited.

A little bit from where he was, one of the few couples in his grade year were at the girlfriend's locker. The girl, a rather short, nymph-like creature, was looking up at her boyfriend in what she must have meant to be a coy, sweet manner every so often as she collected her things. The boyfriend was standing on the direct opposite of the locker door, smiling a small smile back and speaking to the hallway passersby on occasion.

'Well, there we have it,' Gokudera thought sarcastically as he observed the couple without looking at their faces. '_That_'s the cookie-cutter model for relationships in my grade, this school, and around the world. _That_ is what's supposed to be a good relationship, or at least a common one.'

The girl nodded, the boy shut her locker, and they held hands as went down the hallway. Gokudera followed them with just his eyes until they turned the corner to go down the stairwell and went out of his sight. He blinked antipathetically in the direction that they had gone off in, not even bothering to expend the minimal energy of rolling his eyes on something, however senseless and curious that he found it to be, that he saw on a daily basis.

'And _that_ won't last beyond high school,' he said to himself as he got off the wall to join his friends when they came down the hallway.

But whether the couple that he had just seen would last or not, Tsuna's crush on Kyoko was still going live and strong, as the other two found out, as the three made their way off the school grounds. His spirit apparently not crushed even after the note-intensive last period class, or perhaps because he wanted to get his mind off the last class, Tsuna was still focusing on the highlight of his day: the presentation with Kyoko.

"Like, I definitely thought that I would stutter at least once, but I didn't!" the brunet boy exclaimed victoriously. "And she even told me afterwards that I did really well, except she sort of said that to everyone cuz she's so nice so maybe I shouldn't count that."

"Nah, you really did do well," affirmed Yamamoto, finding his friend's enthusiasm for his girl a little amusing but playing along all the same. "I think you're really getting friendly with her now."

"Yeah, I know! Wow, who'd have thought? Hey, since this quarter's almost over, d'you think that by next quarter I might be able to date her?"

"Whoa!" said Gokudera, putting his hand up slightly and laughing a little surprisedly. "Dating? Next quarter? That's like, a week away, you know that right? I didn't know you had it in you, Tsuna! You've only just started liking her, really, and you already want to get in a relationship?"

"I haven't only just started liking her!" Tsuna protested. "I've liked her for a while!"

His last statement made the other two pause in their tracks.

"No, seriously? For how long? And why didn't you tell us before?!"

"You don't just tell people this sort of stuff! I didn't tell you guys about this at all, remember? You just guessed and found out! And I don't really know how long, but it's been since the beginning of the year, I think."

"No way ..." Gokudera said lowly in disbelief. "How's that even possible?"

"If it's been since the start of the year, then that means that you've liked for, like, three months!" Yamamoto exclaimed.

"Aww, it's nothing, guys," said the subject of the two's surprise, smiling shyly and trying to wave off his friends' attention. "It's not anything super serious or anything like that. It's just a crush, after all."

"A crush or not, how do you even like the same person for that long? I mean, like, the basic nature of a crush is that it's one-sided, so wouldn't you get tired of it pretty fast? Like, there'd be no motivation to continue." Gokudera shrugged halfway after speaking and then shut himself up before he said something inadvertently insensitive about a topic that he didn't know the first thing about.

"I don't know ... this one's just lasted for some reason. Besides, it's not something that I really control, you know. I can't just turn on or off my liking her."

"Oh, uh, I see," responded the silver-haired boy, although he was still absolutely clueless. "I ... okay, then."

What was curious about the uncertainty that Gokudera felt was that he didn't have any difficulty in imagining Tsuna and Kyoko in the same position as the couple that he had seen just a couple of minutes ago. He could switch around the faces easily and have it look completely natural; but it didn't feel that way. Dimly but surely as a flashlight's glow from under the bed covers, the sense that there was a disconnect between Tsuna's alleged real affection and the mentally clipped romantic cut-scene at the lockers shone on him. He blinked indeterminately in front of him and tried to just focus on where he was going.

"You totally do not see! You look so confused!" Yamamoto snickered as he skipped up to poke at his non-lovesick friend. He blew at the silver hair playfully. "What's wrong, haven't you ever liked anyone?"

Gokudera retaliated by blowing back and shaking his head, grateful for the distraction, but didn't answer except for grinning ambiguously, expecting that the casual question would just be allowed to roll off him.

Unfortunately, he had counted on this without adding a third factor into the situation.

"You've liked someone, right?" Tsuna asked him again innocently. "So even if you don't like anyone now, you can think back and then you'll get what I mean!"

The addressed boy thought about the suggestion as he kept walking, knowing that he had to now give some type of reply. His friend's comment was one that he would normally laugh off, but perhaps because he had only just recently come into a realization of his sexuality, the very idea of liking someone seemed different and more serious. But he instinctively knew, rather than figured out, that taking his friend's lighthearted advice wouldn't clarify anything for him. If his mind was a database and Tsuna's words had been put through the search engine, no tags had been picked up.

"Mhm... no, I don't think so," he answered with forced indifference. "I haven't ever liked anyone." The moment that he heard his own words, he knew that they were true even though they had been a shot in the dark when he had said them.

There was a brief pause.

"Uh ... What?! How's that possible?" yelped Tsuna after the moment of silence. "You've _never_ liked anyone? You haven't even had a crush?"

Yamamoto was no less astonished than Tsuna, but he kept quiet for the moment, more stunned then incensed. He couldn't quite comprehend the magnitude of what Gokudera had said, let alone think of the words to counteract it.

"Nope," Gokudera responded coolly, tossing his head and feeling more and more certain of his answer even if he wasn't for its implications. He was almost proud. "I've never liked anyone."

"Okay, uhm," Tsuna said desperately, as though begging for his friend to tell him something different. "Seriously, no joking, you've never liked anyone?"

"Yup. That's what I said."

"Maybe, like, you two are thinking about two different things," put in Yamamoto, his tone more hesitant than hopeful as he chose his words carefully. "See, what he means is whether you've liked anyone as in, well, just that. Not as in love or wanting to date them or anything like that."

"Yes, I'm not stupid, thanks." Gokudera shot him an annoyed glance but softened the gesture with a little huff. "I _know_ what liking someone means. And I just haven't had that oh-so-glorious experience, okay?'

"But ... everyone's liked at least one person in their life, haven't they?" the lover-boy out of the three asked into the air, shaking his brown head almost ruefully. "Some people say that everyone always likes someone at any given point in time, for god's sake! And liking someone's hardly anything hard! Like, crushing on someone can be bad, but just the feeling of liking someone's a good feeling isn't it?"

"A good feeling?" Gokudera repeated Tsuna's words as though saying them out loud would help clarify things. Not having had any experience on the subject matter, he was both slightly bemused by and marginally bored with the topic for lack of personal connection. "Uh, I don't know where you got that idea. You really must explain that to me sometime."

"See, it's like this," came the immediate reply, meant as enthusiastically and as ardently as a missionary's sermon to a possible convert. "At least for me, when I –"

"– I said _sometime_," Gokudera cut in, careful to keep from sounding too rude but also wanting to somewhat express his disinterest. He wasn't entirely joking. "As in, not now."

"Naw, you really gotta hear this," the lover-boy continued, unperturbed by the interruption and taking his friend's comment as his usual sarcasm, "As I was saying, from my experience, liking Kyoko's pretty good. Like, I don't know if she likes me back or not, but I still like her and I sorta like liking her, I think. It just feels sorta nice. I can't believe you've never liked anyone! You should try it!"

"Uhm, no thanks. You must be kidding me. And by the way, you're still not making any sense."

"Yeah, I don't really get that either," Yamamoto seconded. "I've never liked anyone as, like, intensely as you like Kyoko, but the feeling is just like it _is_, you know? It's not one way or the other. But anyway, back to you, Gokudera. How come you're never liked anyone?"

"Don't know. Just haven't. I mean, I've wanted to date people, and there are people that I've found attractive, but that's not liking. That's just the way it's turned out."

"How's it possible that you've wanted to date people without liking them? You must have liked them, right?" It was more of an exclamation than a question, Tsuna reaching for a ray of hope in what he saw as his friend's dark love life.

"Stop asking me how it's possible! Yamamoto just said that liking someone just _is_, right? Well, for me, not liking anyone in that way just _is_, okay?"

As Tsuna, apparently not realizing that his methodology was having no effect, blurted out "But that's not possible!" and entered into another rather frantic and futile attempt at persuasion, Yamamoto thought a little deeper about Gokudera's flippant but revealing comment.

'It just _is_ that he doesn't like anyone? What does he mean by that? Humans are social animals and we basically need friendship, so wouldn't we also need love? He almost sounds like he's saying that he can't like anyone.'

Then a small idea hit him and he quickly voiced it.

"Hey, you said you've been attracted to people, right? Well, how do you know that's not liking?"

"Isn't it obvious?" the addressed boy replied, his tone snarky but also slightly relieved at being saved from Tsuna's incessant heckling. "You look at models and think they're hot, right? So you're attracted to them but you don't like-like them, do you? Even in regular life, there's a lot of people with pretty decent personalities and good characteristics that you don't like in that way."

"How do you know that you haven't liked someone in that way, though?" said Tsuna unrelentingly, "Maybe you have!"

"Listen!" Gokudera said, clearly getting tired of being questioned and going on a bit of a defensive-attack, "How do _you_ know that you like Kyoko in that way, then, huh? Maybe you don't!"

Completely unthreatened in his surety of his own emotions, Tsuna sighed in the manner of a specialized superior having to deign to the level of the layman. "I know, cuz it feels a certain way. I told you! It really does feel good, and I'm really not kidding you."

Gokudera slapped his hand on his forehead and sighed. He spoke from under his hand. "Okay, if you want to explain this and you really want to persuade me that bad, then go ahead. You win."

"Okay, so it's like this," said their resident Cupid in human form. "It's like you get happy just knowing that that person's around, you know? You get this happy, sort of nervous feeling, and it's sorta nice."

"I take it back, please stop," Gokudera groaned. "Let's not start making up tragic untruths!"

"It's not an untruth! Look, think of it this way. You like having us around, right? Well, why d'you suppose that is? It's the same thing!"

"It's not the same thing! We're friends! This is all just casual and loose and free, and I like that, but liking someone in that way ... that just takes up so much of your time! It makes otherwise normal people act in weird ways. What's so great about that? Like, I'd want to _resist_ liking someone cuz it's just so ... it's not me!"

"C'mon, you don't mean that. You're thinking of the stuff you see on movies and such, but what about in real life?" Yamamoto argued, jumping into the recent great debate. "If not now, wouldn't you want to date a bit in college? You said before that you want to go clubbing and flirt, didn't you? (12. Chapter 12) How do you suppose you do that if you're gonna resist liking anyone?"

"Flirting's different! That's casual! I don't have to like someone to do that!"

"But flirting leads to liking, though. Or at least it can lead to dating. And you wanna date, right?"

"Yeah, I guess I'm down with dating, but, like, oh I don't know. You guys know that I don't want to date now even if I could, but college ... that's another thing. But I don't think I'll date super seriously. I just want to sort of scope the field. Just try things out and not be tied down and all that."

Yamamoto nudged him with his elbow and let out a little laugh, for lack of any other response. Unlike Tsuna, who was more than a little worried, what he felt about Gokudera wasn't concern. It was almost something like curiosity. Something didn't connect. The way that Gokudera dealt with his friendships, the way that he looked around and allegedly picked out people on the street to pocket and take away with him, all of that indicated a certain amount of conscious attraction and passion that were at complete odds with the way he viewed relationships.

'It's weird, but it's like he's afraid of getting attached to people. He's not like this with us or anyone else, though. What does he think is going to happen if he finds someone he likes? His entire personality completely flip around on him and turn into a different person? But that's absurd.'

"Seriously," he said, turning and trying to look Gokudera straight in the face as they kept walking. "Why're you so paranoid about all this? This isn't anything, like, scary or whatever. But hey, if you've never liked anyone, then you can't know the feeling, and we're failing at explaining this to you anyways. I bet you're gonna meet this total catch in college, though, and then you'll know what we mean," he ended confidently.

Gokudera shook his head ambiguously. His friends couldn't quite tell if he was shaking his head in dissent or if he was just flicking his hair out of his face as usual. In reality, he was trying to clear his mind of all the questions that had just surfaced.

'Will I meet anyone? I mean, there are lots of decent guys around me now, but I don't like them. What's the criteria for someone to be likable to me? Is there such a criteria?' he wondered, not without a twinge of fear at the thought of his narrow picking field. 'More importantly, can I ever like anyone? Do I even have that capacity?'

He ran his fingers slowly through his already windblown hair. The resultant feeling was, as ever, simple and physical and exquisitely wonderful in its automatic sensation. He couldn't imagine that any emotion, given or received, romantic or otherwise, could ever give him that same sense of satisfaction, of being appreciated, of being taken care of and of being served. He had the feeling that if a random person touched his hair in that way, he would want to beat them up but that if someone that he felt comfortable with did the same action, he would get a rush of endorphins.

'Is this sort of feeling what Tsuna is talking about when he says that liking someone feels good?' he wondered awkwardly. 'Does it take a combination of the right sort of person and the right sort of mindset?'

He stopped touching his hair before he could get any more confused and looked to his friends.

"I don't know what's gonna happen in the future," he said slowly, trying to balance being reserved with being honest, "but I'm willing to bet my life that I won't crush on anyone like Tsuna is. And for now ... I'm fine with the way that things are."

/

* * *

The rest of the afternoon went by in a haze, the boys haphazardly doing their homework in a never-ending cycle of work, play, concentration, and distraction at Tsuna's house.

None of them did as well as they usually did, Tsuna still being too excited about Kyoko, Yamamoto still half-pondering over Gokudera, and Gokudera still in an off-mood from the after-school conversation.

Barely a third through his homework even after a little over two hours, Gokudera realized that he had been doing nothing much except staring at the same page for ten minutes and decided that he had had enough of this. There were about thirty minutes or so left in their usual study time, but he felt that even being alone in his house would be better than this tired unproductive atmosphere and he wanted to go.

He sharply flicked his pencil away with his middle finger and reached for his backpack as the pencil rolled off the table and under a nearby couch. The other two looked up at the disturbance.

"Fuck this, I really can't think right now, I'm going home, okay?"

"What ... you're going? Are you done with your homework, then?"

"No, but my brain's running a flatline right now and besides, I want to go take a shower anyways. You guys are cool with me going, right?" Gokudera asked, his things already mostly packed and already partly standing up. He was clearly set on leaving.

Yamamoto thought fast as he considered his options.

'If I go with him now, then we can walk the same route and I'll be able to ask him some stuff that he probably wouldn't answer me if it was the three of us. Tsuna won't be too upset if the both of us leave before the usual time as long as I make up some excuse and I can always finish up my homework at home like Gokudera's planning on doing. He might be annoyed if I go with him, though, especially if I ask him about why he feels the way he does about liking people while we walk. Should I go with him and risk it or not?'

Gokudera was already up and on his way to the door when he called after him to wait and announced that he, too, needed to go with an excuse about having to type up a paper.

In a couple of minutes they were back on the street, walking together silently.

Yamamoto walked a little behind Gokudera, glancing at him every so often as though he was trying to gauge the right time to ask about what he had meant earlier about how he just _was_ in not liking anyone. As they walked, he wasn't sure if he was keeping quiet because he was waiting for the right time or if he was simply trying to muster up the courage. They were only a minute or so from when they had to part ways when he finally broke the quiet.

"Uhm, I know that this isn't your favorite topic and all, and like, don't kill me, but what'd you mean before about how just don't have it in you to like anyone? Do you just mean that, like, the right person hasn't come along, or something?"

"Not this again," Gokudera sighed, but he sounded less annoyed than defeated. "No, I don't mean that the right person hasn't come around. I don't believe in that fairy tale shit. Ah ... I don't really know what I meant by that. Forget it, will ya?"

"C'mon, that's a crap answer," Yamamoto pressed. "Just think about it for a second. Cuz you gotta admit, what you said is pretty unusual."

"Look. I really don't know. I just ... liking someone is just all controlled by hormones. It's not this fucking spiritual connection or anything. So I don't think too much of it, okay? You shouldn't either."

"But if it's hormones, then–"

"–Yeah, yeah, if it's all hormones then everybody should have been through it and yadda yadda yah, but what if you need a trigger to start up the whole thing?" Gokudera asked, whirling around and almost challenging him to say otherwise. "And what if that trigger's not a trigger unless you _want_ it to be? And what if you _don't_ want it to be? What if _I_ don't want it to be?"

They were now at the point where they separated. Gokudera's house was down the opening of the alley street they were standing at. The occupant of said house stood to the side of the opening, leaning on a lamppost and awaiting an answer from his momentarily struck-speechless companion before he would head off.

"Well ... I don't think that's entirely good," Yamamoto said more hesitantly than ever. "I mean, your choice, but maybe you should, you know, sort of relax a bit. And uh, ha, who knows? Like the songs always say, maybe you'll be caught off guard. At least think about it, yeah?"

As he saw the other boy wave brusquely from behind his back and watched him head down the street without so much as another word, there were two predominant thoughts in his mind: the first, that talking to Gokudera about feelings was very near dangerous, and second, that Gokudera's straight-faced, one shoulder shrug before he had turned to walk away was possibly the worst answer that he had gotten from him in a good long while.

/

* * *

Once Gokudera had gotten home and put his books down, he took a hot shower to try to clear his mind more than clean his body and after quickly drying himself, climbed under his bedsheets and laid quite alert and still. He looked out the window as he waited for his body heat to warm him up.

The temperature outside was now dropping down enough at night that the homeless people of the city were starting to take refuge inside subway stations after the metro had closed. It was still some ways before anybody would freeze to death on the streets, but it was enough that going for regular night outings anymore was out of the question.

So he laid down flat and low in his already darkened bedroom and was forced to do his exploring purely in his mind.

There were no conscious thoughts. Subconscious swirlings, thin lines observing school, academia, peers, friends, and other aspects of his life, ran a continuous track around and around his head. None of them, however, were enough of a disturbance to puncture into the open board of mental discussion as he lay prostrate and relaxed.

The developing young adult, like so many others before and with him who were physically maturing, chose instead to focus on basic sensation. A feeling of being worn out was stretched out along the line of his muscles even while he was lying motionless. When he moved, being careful not to lift the sheets and chill himself, the feeling of fabric sliding against his skin was intensely enjoyable.

Full of raw appreciation, Gokudera closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, slipping into the mental fast-track.

In his mind, he was whizzing through bright open campuses and dark narrow streets. With the rush of the real night city as his background soundtrack, scene after scene clipped by in the insides of his eyelids. He looked much the same as he did now, perhaps a little more cut, perhaps a little more contained, and he was darting in and out of buildings, clubs, libraries, restaurants, and cars.

There were other people, people whom he did not recognize, in the imagined mental clips; he was smiling at, scowling to, making out, and sleeping with some of them. It was all physical. The people in his vision were decent people, he felt, people whom he was glad to have in his life. But as he opened his eyes and felt the weight of his bedsheets on top of him again, he also felt that they were people whom he wouldn't be too sad to have out of his life either.

'What does it mean, for me,' he tentatively pondered, being careful to keep conscious that this was about himself and no one else, 'to have someone that I really care about, to have a ... a personal connection?'

Gokudera refused to replace the term 'personal' with 'romantic' even to himself in his mind. Even considering what he had said to his friends earlier on in the day, he knew that if not now, then later in the future, he would want to have someone to pair up with, but nevertheless it still seemed wrong to him label this desire as romantic. Romance, it seemed to him, was something very visible and tangible, something that conjured up definitive images of couples sitting in tables for two, holding hands as they walked, kissing each other goodnight, or following each other into the same bedroom, images which he could in no way associate with himself.

As he always did when he was unsure about something, he tried to think of the matter systematically, observing the general consensus before he considered what his personal opinion was.

'For everyone else, it's like they're always looking for someone to care about them rather than looking for someone to care about. Everyone's always looking for 'the one,' when they're not already infatuated over a random person who they think is a good candidate for the job. People who are in a relationship are happy about being wanted for a time, and then they struggle to keep things going, to keep on feeling a connection, I guess. The effort put into a relationship is mostly seen as something that should come naturally out of affection, and it's considered to be worth it for the love and emotional support that they feel that they get in return.'

'But there's the flip side too. Despite putting in effort, or maybe because of the amount of effort that's required, couples break up all the time. People get upset for a while, and then they move on. They find other things to occupy their interests and wants and needs. People who don't move on are either seen as faithful or pathetic, and people who don't have to move on, whose relationships last, are called lucky or committed.'

He sat up and shrugged to himself. 'Either way, life goes on.'

His room was now completely dark. The window was closed, but the shades were pulled aside from the glass and small sparks within the frame, city lamp lights from good distances away, reflected over his retinas. Ignoring the cold, he got up from his bed and went to the window to look out, as though he needed proof that life really did inexorably go on.

Although he was still completely naked and there were apartments outside his window with windows of their own, he had no worry that anybody would see him. With the light off in his room, all that anybody from the opposite apartments could see would be a black rectangle where his window was. In the little miniature reality TV boxes that were the windows of the brightly lit apartments on the other side, he could see tiny people going about their tiny lives without any awareness of him.

Slightly chilled, he looked out into the indifferent metallic city and started to think of what it would be like, for him, to like someone.

'Liking someone is ... trust. It's got to be on faith. If I like someone, I'll want to do it properly, and not have any stupid little doubts about it. I'd want it to just ... it should be automatic but also mechanical; I should have control over it, at least the beginning part. Pull the trigger and let the bullet take its course and all that. I'm still technically steering it's course because I aimed the gun, right?'

'If I think about it this way, it doesn't even matter who it is that comes along," he realized. "I mean, yeah I have my preferences, but staying within the necessary parameters, isn't liking someone mostly about me and how I think about a certain person? But ... how do I pull the trigger? How does anyone just let the bullet go? Do I have to let go to like someone? Everyone's always saying that it's not by choice, that they get caught off guard, that it's not in their control, but is that really necessary? Must I relinquish choice, control, free will?'

The prospect of having his life directed by someone else, even if that someone was someone he liked or even loved, was absolutely repulsive.

He was leaning on the glass now with only his spread fingertips for support to prevent his body from collapsing on the clear sheet. The pressure of his weight on his finger-pads was numbing the feeling of coldness that was his one valid connection with the outside world. He dimly wondered if the strength of his personality, of his mentality, was having the same effect of suppressing his emotions and wondered if this was a bad thing.

He eased his weight off his arms and simply stood in front of the window, letting his blood flow to every last bit of him, and waited.

Then he pushed off the window glass and went to find his backpack.

'No, I can't let my life be governed by emotions,' he concluded as he took out his homework. 'If I ever like anyone, I'm going to damn well do it by choice.'

* * *

**Gokudera's stance on liking people is my stance. There's nothing more to say.**

**If you don't mind, could you comment on the flow or theme of the story after my alexithymia hit from this chapter? I'm concerned that my personal change may have affected my writer's style and unduly changed this story's course.**

**Thank you, and please review.**


	18. Chapter 18

**I am absolutely exhausted.**

**School, as in academics, is hard enough - friends acting in inexplicable ways is harder.**

**I hope I managed to express that the right way in this chapter.**

* * *

Yamamoto thought again, in the back of his mind, of the conversation that he had had with Gokudera the last night. Retracing his steps in reverse on his morning route to school, he wondered how his seemingly unfathomable friend would react to him when they would inevitably meet sometime during the academic day.

He ran through possible scenarios in his head.

Gokudera sitting across from him in the cafeteria; Gokudera passing by him in the hallway; Gokudera standing at the bulletin board. The silver-haired rocker boy wasn't harsh or even rude to him in any of the scenarios, but the mood felt purposely distant in some, forced friendly in others, although it could have just been his worried imagination. Pushing these less than excellent case-scenarios out of his mind, Yamamoto plucked at a strain of optimism and started to consider what might be the best-case scenario.

'Glancing by him in the hallway between classes would be best,' he felt after a moment of consideration. 'That way, it'll be so fast that it won't have time to be awkward and it'll get the initial greeting over and done with. And once that's covered, it'll be the same as normal in the lunch period and after school. I mean, he's not one to really hang over things – even if he was annoyed yesterday, he won't be today.' He shifted his backpack uncertainly. 'Or at least he won't show it if he still is.'

As had randomly replayed in his mind ever since it had occurred, the video image, of Gokudera giving him that wordless crooked shrug before turning and leaving him stranded on the street, came to him.

'I mean, at the very least,' he thought as he stopped at a crosswalk and focused his sight on something hopefully more real and distinctly less unsettling than what he had in his memory, 'At the very least, he won't pull that sort of act on me again. That was … unusual. Even for him.'

The crosswalk pedestrian light changed before long and he walked across the road. When he had crossed, there was now only a straight stretch of sidewalk before he would reach the school gates. Yamamoto walked along unconsciously, his image of Gokudera lingering but fading with every step that he grew closer to the actual boy.

'Yeah, he won't pull that sort of act on me again. That's not him.'

He felt sure that he was right. Or at least, he believed it because he wanted to.

Mind set at a temporary ease, Yamamoto set aside the image of his skeptic friend's hard-eyed stare and started considering the other type of stare that Gokudera had been giving the outside world, the stare that had started this whole confusion in the first place.

'What's _up_ with the way he looks at people lately? Like, before, there wasn't anything weird, but now it's like … it's like he's playing his subway game on the whole world. But it's not just casual intent; he's not looking because there's nothing else to do. I mean, I don't know what he's playing at or who he's looking at, but whoever it is, he's looking at them like he wants to take them home with him or follow them around for a little while. It's a steady, conscious stare that he's giving them. He's not just staring off into space. He's definitely aware that he's doing it. He's definitely doing it on purpose.'

Thinking about Gokudera and this recently developed streak of behavior reminded Yamamoto of how Gokudera sometimes commented on what the couples at their school did. That he commented on what the couples did could only mean that he had observed their behavior.

Yamamoto didn't quite want to think that his friend had been observing the couples in the same way that a zoologist might observe animal behavior. But it didn't seem apt to say that what he was doing was like how an anthropologist or psychologist examined human behavior – Gokudera had far too little respect for his observation subjects for that.

'But why would he be watching them, then? If he's not respectful enough to leave them alone, he's at least not immature enough to think that they're shoving their relationship in his face. He _knows_ he's doing it. So what's up with this?," Yamamoto questioned. "He gets irritated with me when I talk about feelings but he actively looks for and studies theirs?'

Now, only a little bit ahead, was the school. As he approached it, Yamamoto, in his turn, watched the steady flow of students go through the gates, the students all shouldering their backpacks and trudging unenthusiastically to the academic building. They were all glared at by Hibari, who was standing on the threshold of the school grounds, on top of a fence. Some of the students mingling in the loose crowd were couples. Hibari directed his accusing stare at everyone who passed through his field of vision, looking a little harder at the couples but generally watching for inappropriate behavior.

Passing through the open gates himself and entering the school grounds, Yamamoto realized that Hibari didn't regard the couples more attentively because he had anything in particular against them or because he had any special interest in them. He merely treated them differently because it was somewhat reasonable to think that couples might be more inclined towards behaving in ways that he was watching out for.

Yamamoto glanced back quickly at the school's Disciplinary Committee head. When none of the couples around even so much as held hands, their arms full of books and minds preoccupied with the homework that they had only half-finished, Hibari looked almost disappointed.

'Is that it, then? Is that the same reason why he watches them? Is it because he has expectations that he wants to have met?' Yamamoto turned his thoughts back towards Gokudera. 'Does he want to see something that he's not getting, and so he's frustrated?'

Trying to think in the morning seemed to bring up more questions than it did answers. It was easier to mentally bring up the visual of his friend and look at it and wonder and try to naturally feel things out.

But when he brought up the image of the look that Gokudera had given him the last night, the first time that he had done so by choice, Gokudera's lopsided shrug was still far too careless and his look was as hard and guarded as ever.

/

* * *

Walking into the class right before lunch, Gokudera was feeling distinctly blank.

Perhaps his own subconscious had taken his last night's resolution a little too seriously, but as though his mind had entered a fighting mode in which it was absolutely determined not to stupidly and emotionally 'fall for anyone,' he seemed to be quite incapable of regarding anyone with any personal sincerity or connection. He found them reasonably interesting from an intellectual standpoint, depending on what they were doing that was amusing to him, but he would have just as soon wanted to be friends with them as throw them out the window.

Of course, this perception of others could almost be seen as normal for Gokudera, but having a consciousness of it was new.

Whatever his internal condition, he was outwardly the same. While the others chatted casually before the bell rang, he seated himself, got out his note-taking materials as usual, and kept himself loosely occupied and to himself in the minute or so before class started.

That day's class was mostly review for the test that was coming up at the end of the week; the lecture concerned with materials that Gokudera was already reasonably familiar with. When it was about the middle of the period, he only laxly listened to the teacher, half paying attention and half not, and started looking out for what some of the boys next to him were doing that might be marginally more interesting to him.

The students in that class had assigned seats – a situation which had generated some whiny complaints from the other students when it had first been implemented, but which hadn't mattered too much one way or the other to Gokudera. He had just been satisfied when his seat had been in the second row because he preferred to be in the upper half of the class and not have his view of the board obstructed; if he was going to concentrate on the lesson, he might as well do it properly.

But whatever his opinion of the assigned seats had been or was, it had induced an interesting state of affairs; two members of the 'slacker group' (16. Chapter 16) were seated directly next to him.

Gokudera didn't have many classes with the 'slackers,' he having mostly honors classes that they, not being exactly the brightest in the grade, weren't generally in, but the current class was one of the staples that everyone had. In the other staple classes, the 'slackers' predictably sat in the back row and didn't come remotely close to him, but this class was the exception with its assigned seats.

The first of the slackers was immediately to the left of him and the second was right in front of the first slacker. At the most, they were both within a meter or so from where he was.

Both of were dark haired, slightly tanned, and asleep.

They weren't blatantly sleeping with their heads down. Elbows on the desk and hands supporting their angled chins, they had their heads precariously propped up with their lower arms. It was apparent that both of them were only very lightly asleep or simply drowsing because they blinked at each other on occasion as though checking up on each other. Gokudera watched them quietly.

Pretty soon, the first slacker shook his head slightly and seemed to permanently wake up. Getting on a slightly mischievous look, he reached out his hand like a hunter and snapped his middle finger on the back of the neck of the second slacker. The second slacker, who had been on his own way to waking up for good, wasn't much surprised and hardly flinched, assumedly used to this type of behavior from his friend. He rubbed his neck slowly and rotated in his seat so that he was seated sideways.

"Fuuuuuck," he said slowly, in very mellow tones, dragging out the word and comfortably sliding back in his seat. "That was a reeaaally nice rest I just had."

The first slacker grinned. "This class is the best for that," he remarked fondly. "We both slept."

Something about the way that the two had their own sleepy bubble, speaking in the lowest registers of their voices and gesturing softly and slowly with their thick athletic arms moved Gokudera from casual eavesdropping to fascinated observation. If thinking about something was artificial interest, what he felt now towards them was more natural and easy, the grasping of an already existent connection. Gokudera didn't lean in towards them or turn his face in their direction, but he flickered his eyes over to them every once in a while and focused his ears on what they were saying.

"I know. I looked at you a bit ago. You were, like, not even looking in front," the second slacker was drawling. "Like, I look around, and I see you with your face turned to the side wall, and I was like, 'Oh my god, he's not even trying not to get caught!'"

"Was I really?" The first slacker started snickering. It should have been annoying, but if Gokudera had to pick a word to describe what he thought of it right in that very same moment, he would have picked 'cute' without any hesitation. "Was it very obvious?"

"Well _yeeaaah_. Like I said, I turn to you and you're going like this!" the second slacker did an exaggerated approximation of the first slacker's sleeping position, pushing his chin towards the left wall so that his line of vision was a full ninety degrees from anywhere close to being directed at the board. "And I was like, 'Eh? Holy shit!'" He turned back around to face his friend and mock tsk-ed. "You're getting careless, boy."

"Heh heh," the first slacker snickered again, grinning wider. "I'm out of practice, that's what it is. Nice covering me."

"Yeah, no problem."

The soft-toned conversation continued on like this, the tranquilized atmosphere never dissipating. Objectively viewed, it was the lowest of the low in terms of mindful communication and if the circumstances had been that Gokudera had been having trouble understanding a concept, he would have been intensely aggravated by their mindless chitchat.

The situation being what it was with him having the leisure to relax, however, changed things.

Gokudera didn't feel strictly attracted to them, certainly not emotionally but, strangely enough, not sexually either even though the two were some of the best looking and fittest in the grade. But he did feel a mild but steady pull towards them. Usually, when he wanted to pocket someone, the feeling flashed by, there and gone, but this time he felt a constant version of it with the two.

The want felt earthy and instinctive, like a mental version of sexual arousal.

'I want to _have_ them,' he thought, his mind quite turned away from the class lecture and his thoughts approaching concentration. 'I mean, nothing personal, it's not something that's heartfelt, but even so. I don't even want to do anything with them; I just … sort of … want to keep them somewhere safe and private, maybe in the park place, and be able to look at them whenever I feel like it.'

Gokudera continued observing the two, determining what he felt about them and following the curve of their lips and the line of their muscles with his dark eyes. It was curious how he could, without feeling physically aroused in any way, still mentally appreciate their visually pleasing attributes and their delightfully boyish behavior. It was something different to what he had felt in the cafeteria. Without trying, everything automatically clicked.

'It's psychological sexuality,' he thought to himself, amused by his own reaction to the two. 'I'm attracted to their being boys, to their boyishness and that's it. If I was occupied with something else, I'd find their behavior bothersome, but starting blank I'm finding it endearing because I'm naturally drawn to what I associate as male characteristics. Huh, what about that.'

Just to test this theory and check that he was right, he looked around at the girls in the class and observed their behavior. Now that they were in the last ten minutes or so in the period and the teacher had stopped his lecture, everyone had loosened up and was hanging around with their friends.

There were three girls to the right of him. They were, objectively viewed, good looking and both wore clothing that flattered their figures. One of them was the nymph-like girl that he had seen at the lockers the other day and another also had a boyfriend. The third girl hadn't dated, as far as he could recall, but he knew that the other guys thought her fairly high up on the physical appearance level and that she got along well with the other kids. They were all, in short, girls who were seen as attractive.

Gokudera tried to think of them in as unbiased a way as he could.

The three had huddled together in a trio of desks, rather like the two boys had done but with one more. Whatever it was that they were talking about, they were carefree about it, not in a rush to find out something but twirling their hands and flicking at loose strands of their hair as they spoke. The tone of their voices was like that of most girls, not noticeably high-pitched but obviously a half octave or so higher than any of the boys'. Two of them were seated with crossed legs and one of them was standing and leaning on a desk. All of them had hair that was shoulder length or longer, not tied up but loose and hanging, and had on tight skinny jeans.

Gokudera looked away, glanced briefly back at the two slacker boys who were still right next to him, and started packing up his things.

'It doesn't matter how good-looking they are,' he thought as he zipped up his pencil-case. 'The three girls I just looked at probably have a few points up on those two, but that hardly matters for me. They might as well not be in this class with me at all because I don't notice them, except when they're doing something annoying, unless I consciously put my mind to them.' He closed his backpack and looked behind him where most of the other boys in his class were. None of the other boys were exceptionally good-looking; if he were being harsh, he would have described them as plain or homely. 'It's funny, though. I wouldn't call them ugly. No, that wouldn't feel right. Not when even the worst of them have one up on the best girl.'

He got up and slung his backpack on one shoulder and swept the room with his eyes. To him, it was like the girls were pixelated and the boys were in high-definition (HD). It felt almost too easy to skim over the girls and pick out the boys in a fell swoop.

The bell rang and the kids, Gokudera included, automatically headed for the door and filed out of the classroom. As he walked, his eyes flickered over short thick hair and angled jawlines and rectangular shoulders, uninterested and blind to everything else.

Smirking only slightly less suggestively than he had in the cafeteria before, he consciously stopped scanning over the crowd.

'Huh, well what do you know," he mused, not entirely sure whether he should be amused, indifferent, or scared. "Looks like I can't control this. Not the basics. It's all in my head, except it's real, and I can't get away from it.'

He flicked his quick gaze back up from one boy to another in the crowd moving towards the cafeteria and let himself be carried by the flow. If he concentrated even slightly, he could scent the musky cologne that a lot of the teenage guys wore. The Axe, Abercrombie, and Armani, just to name the A's, entirely overpowered, both olfactively and mentally, the sweet flowery perfumes that he knew the girls wore.

Nudged along through the clear double doors doors, Gokudera entered the haze of salty, spicy, greasy smell that denoted that day's mass-produced school lunch as he walked inside the cafeteria and joined the waiting line. He was still feeling emotionally blank, still not feeling any sincere affection for anyone, but in his mind he was yet breathing in the heady cologne that remained underlying his changing atmosphere and he loved the sensory connections that he felt with it.

By the time he picked up his tray and picked out where Yamamoto and Tsuna were, he had tied down the key bonds and had a finalized understanding of what he could work with.

Gokudera jerked his bangs out of his vision, and started moving through the crowd, feeling ready to move on to the next step.

/

* * *

When Gokudera sat down on the table seat next to him, Yamamoto couldn't help but think that it was both a blessing and a curse.

It was somewhat fortunate, although he had to guiltily admit the thought even to himself, that he would now be spared the trouble of carefully avoiding eye contact with Gokudera as it was rather difficult to directly look at the person seated a mere foot to his left. But then again, it was Gokudera, Gokudera with his hard-eyed stare from the last night, that was the person seated a mere foot to his left.

The final arrival to the trio's table slung his backpack off to the side so that it lay in the corner where the floor and wall met, reached out his foot, and tapped his things deeper into the corner edge. He had his back turned as if to bide time, his grip firm on the seat so that he wouldn't slide back and slam into Yamamoto. The way his leg went carefully tap tapping at his bag was a curiously purposeful action that contrasted with the singular recklessness of the initial act in tossing his things aside in the first place.

When Gokudera whirled around, he had a friendly enough disposition and showed it on his face.

Immediately relieved and feeling rather encouraged at this unexpected finding, Yamamoto responded quickly, smiling and nodding as usual. "Hey," he said. From the opposite side of the table, Tsuna echoed the greeting.

"Hey," came the answer. Gokudera picked up his fork but didn't use it. "What up?"

"Oh, nothing much. You?"

"Nothing much." There wasn't much to say, this being school and not all of them sharing the same classes, but Gokudera added something else to his two-word phrase just for the sake of it. "Got a test coming up on Friday. Just in time for the end of first quarter, huh?"

"Ah, everybody's got tests on Friday. It's total killer. The teachers always do this to us! I don't know how I'm supposed to prepare. Like, the homework load is the same as ever, so it's like they're not even giving us time to study. I think I have two tests and one quiz or something like that all on Friday!"

"Two tests and an essay for me this week, and the essay goes in for a test grade," Gokudera said easily, in his element when the topic of conversation was something as concrete as academics, nevermind the cumbersome details. "Well, junior year and all. We knew this sort of hell was going to hit us."

"Why can't the teachers think to schedule the tests so they don't overlap so much?" Tsuna groaned, looking stressed at just the thought of the looming examinations.

"It's the end of the quarter. It can't be helped." Gokudera tapped his fork on the edge of the plastic tray and shrugged, not unkindly but decidedly unmoved by his friend's weak complaints.

'There's that shrug again.' Yamamoto felt a little uncomfortable with his freshly jogged memory but also a little glad that the shrug hadn't been directed at him this time around. 'I never really noticed how much he does it, 'cause I'm always hanging around him, but he really does it a lot. He probably hardly even knows he's doing it,' he noted, feeling a little silly. 'Ah, I should've known that the last night wasn't anything. He was just a little tired, that was all. I mean, he's perfectly normal now.'

Feeling at an ease with the one made it easier to be with the other and Yamamoto willingly listened to Tsuna's list of academic and domestic woes, adding on his own minor kid issues and hearing Gokudera snicker at them every once in a while. Near the end of lunch, however, Yamamoto felt that the boy next to him had been conspicuously unreactive for the past couple of minutes.

He glanced to his left at said boy, only a little less surreptitiously than Gokudera had done himself about half an hour ago back in his pre-lunch class. Gokudera had volitionally removed himself from the other two's conversation and was now looking ahead, finishing up his lunch but without glancing down at his tray. His face was turned away, but it was apparent that he had on the same strangely mindful stare that he had displayed so much of over the past few days.

'I'm definitely not imagining that stare, though. That's _definitely_ something new," Yamamoto thought, recapitulating his morning musings. "Should I ask him about it? Can I?'

He recalled the previous day's lunch in which he had asked himself the same question and had decided against it for fear of being slighted. That former apprehension wasn't so prominent anymore in this comfortably unexciting and familiar atmosphere. Gokudera wasn't looking at him with his piercing stare and he didn't feel on the brink of being hypnotized or scrutinized.

'But I do feel like I'm being ignored,' he admitted to himself, trying futilely to follow Gokudera's line of sight and discern whom he was looking at. With three-fourths of the cafeteria stretched out in front of them, specifics were impossible.

Then Yamamoto put thought, and therefore hesitation out of his mind and nudged the boy next to him before he could lose his nerve.

"Uhm, what're you staring at?" His voice snagged because he was speaking so lowly and he loosed a short cough-like laugh and cleared his throat. "'Cause you have, like, this really intense look on you," he justified his asking. "… Uh, Gokudera?"

The addressed boy blinked rapidly twice and turned and faced him. Unlike the last time in the cafeteria, the significance of his look didn't fade and close up but instead seemed to refocus on him without losing its edge. Gokudera's head was tilted, a few strands of his bangs were slanted across his face, and one side of his mouth was slightly curved up in a grin that was barely there. The entire, almost mischievous, combination reassured Yamamoto that his question wouldn't go unanswered, but it also gave him the feeling that Gokudera was amusedly considering whether or not to lie.

"Yeah, you zone out so much lately," cut in Tsuna with a concerned but rather unwelcome interruption. "Are you, like, daydreaming or something?"

Yamamoto froze a little at Tsuna's words.

'Shit, now that Tsuna's mentioned daydreaming, that's what Gokudera's gonna say,' he thought, feeling a splinter of frustration and dismay. 'He basically just got handed a correct answer prompt!'

As though he were thinking the same thing, Gokudera tugged back a corner of his mouth, further skewing his grin.

"Daydreaming? You could say that, I guess…?" He smiled curtly at the cryptic oddity of his own statement and tossed his head in a tiny flick to clear his hair out from his field of vision. His voice was flat and his eyes had lost their previous look of enthrallment. "What, have I been zoning out?"

"_No,_ but it sort of looked like you were concentrating on something," Yamamoto quickly but firmly said before the topic of conversation could stray any further. He enunciated his next words for emphasis. "And I was just wondering if you'd like to share."

"Concentrating?" Gokudera seemed to just be going with whatever was the latest trend, whatever was tossed his way, whatever he found even slightly amusing. He laughed. "How did I go from _daydreaming_ to _concentrating_? About _what_?" He slid his empty tray to the side and laid his open hands upturned on the table.

Yamamoto tapped his foot agitatedly on the tiled floor in restless-leg syndrome and wished that Gokudera's mind could be even halfway as open as his body gestures were. He had given up on clarity and aesthetics by this point; all he asked for now was just some concrete responses. "Well, that's what I'm asking _you_."

Gokudera tilted his head as he looked at Yamamoto. He smiled, and this time, he held it.

He'd been caught, he knew very clearly, caught again while paying attention to other guys in ways that, while not vulgar on this particular incident, could hardly be considered conventional. But for some reason, getting called out for this now, in this subtle flagrante delicto, didn't seize him with panic like the panic he had irrationally felt when he had previously made imperceptible slips of the tongue about the hustler. He didn't even feel the discomfort that he had felt the other day. The worst that he felt now was a type of nervous excitement as to how he could play out this situation, and the best, a kind of pride that his uniqueness was visibly manifest.

'I'm not going to tell him that I'm defining my mental sexuality, of course,' he thought, unfocusing his eyes. 'A pity, really. He would probably be happy to hear that I'm actually somewhat taking his advice and determining my attractions, although I'm not doing so for his proposed purpose. And I'm not going to tell him that it's just nothing because, come on, that's hardly giving myself enough credit, is it?' He refocused his eyes and looked clearly at Daniel, regaining his vision after a hazy split second.

"Oh, I was just checking out the guys over there," he said, being absurdly honest, unbeknownst to the others. He lightly slapped his right hand on the table and reached across with his left and gestured as though it were obvious, smiling his crooked rakish grin all the while. "They're really quite something – you should try it!"

"Uhm. Okay," giggled Tsuna. "Daydreaming or concentrating?"

It was a joking question in response to a deceptively joking answer but Gokudera thought of the fantasies that he had had ever since the hustler and felt the sincerity that he had lacked all morning.

"Hmm, let me think," he said, in mock but real consideration.

The leftover food had been put away a quarter of an hour ago and the first of the students were starting to leave the cafeteria. Someone on the far side had thrown open a window and a strain of cold clean air streamed through and reminded Gokudera of the chilled scent of dry leaves and pine at the park, specifically at his sylvan enclosure. He couldn't remember the hustler's scent. He couldn't discern his own. He looked at Yamamoto, Yamamoto who was the one other person who had been there with him at the park, who was only about a foot from him, and wanted to bury his nose in the other boy's clavicle indent and breathe.

Yamamoto, observant as ever, caught the look and sniffed in surprise. He smiled uncertainly, a gesture of shaky good-faith that was borne out of the vague answer he had received and which was reciprocated with more confidence. Gokudera had evened out his smile; perhaps to seem more friendly, perhaps to seem more genuine, perhaps because he was actually genuine.

"Aren't they the same thing?" he finally remarked. He took up his bag which he had previously cast away and put the straps around his stiff shoulders as he stood up. "Either. _Both_."

Gokudera rubbed at his eye as he followed Yamamoto out the aisle in-between tables. An eyelash came off on the back of his hand. He looked at it for a moment, his mindfulness coming back into his gaze, and then blew it away.

"Yeah. I'd say both."

* * *

**I really do think daydreaming (fantasizing) and concentrating are about the same thing. They're both forms of high-level internal contemplation and they help you find out aspects about yourself. I'm probably going to write in another dream-scene soon for a similar reason.**

**I've written a lot about how Yamamoto notices Gokudera's strange stares, but never wrote what Gokudera himself thinks about his stares. I will, next chapter. Also, the argument/ fight is up, next chapter.**

**Anyways, please tell me what you thought of _this_ chapter.**

**Review, please.**


	19. Chapter 19

**So... yeah, I know I haven't updated. College apps and all. Also the alexithymia but that's standard fare now.**

**I really don't know how well or not I managed with the emotions this time. **

**But hope this connects at least a bit with you (or actually, not, cuz the material ain't that chipper).**

* * *

Yamamoto closed his backpack and glanced around. "Hey, where's Gokudera?" he asked. Last period math class had ended and the three had straggled towards the lockers but now he could only see Tsuna and a couple of other kids he didn't much care about in the vicinity. He slammed his locker shut. "I swear he was just behind me two seconds ago."

"Maybe he went to the bathroom?" Tsuna offered from a few lockers to the side. He closed his own locker and glanced around. Gokudera was nowhere to be seen in the stretch of hallway where the Junior grade lockers were.

The two moved towards the middle of the hallway where the bathrooms were and waited, shifting their heavy bags. When the third member of their group didn't appear after a minute, Yamamoto scuffed the toe of his shoe on the floor and took out his phone from his back pocket.

"You know he has his phone off during the school day," said Tsuna, looking doubtfully at Yamamoto's phone. "He's not going to answer."

'Can't answer because he has his phone off, or has his phone off because he won't answer?' Yamamoto thought, feeling a flash of annoyance. He had known, as well as anyone who had ever tried to contact Gokudera electronically, that Gokudera was well nigh impossible to reach through his phone when he wasn't notified beforehand of a scheduled call or text as he nearly always had his phone either off or on silent. This fact had not occurred to Yamamoto, however, when the predominant thought in his head had been that of finding the increasingly elusive boy.

Even though forgetting Gokudera's phone habits was a rather insignificant detail, he couldn't help feeling a stab of doubt at how he never seemed to have any clue of Gokudera's behavior anymore. He kicked at the floor again and shoved his phone back into his back pocket. "You know we have practice today," he said, complaining a little in an attempt to justify his irritation to himself. "We don't have time to be standing around like this."

Tsuna glanced at his shoes and then back up. "Well, he could still be in the bathroom."

A few boys who were not Gokudera walked out of the bathroom and the two stepped a little away from the door, feeling even more mystified.

"You guys coming or what?" called a flat voice from a little bit away. When the two looked, Gokudera was standing at the end of the hallway, one hand on the corner edge and one hand in his pocket and looking for all the world like he had been the one waiting for them.

"Oh, there you are! Where were you?" asked Tsuna, smiling and crossing the hallway.

Gokudera shifted his eyes, blinked, and then looked at the two in turn. "Uhm. Here," he said, lifting his shoulders a little and cocking his eyebrow slightly as though he thought it was obvious. "I was reading the daily bulletin."

"At the end of the day? Uhm, what's the point of that?" They glanced at each other to check for everyone and started walking down the stairs. Because most of the other students had quickly made themselves scarce when school was over, the hallways were not as packed as before and the movements of all three were a little freer.

Gokudera shrugged and tilted his head and it was almost like normal. "There's a home soccer game today," he said seriously, changing the subject but not completely so. "It's going to start in thirty minutes. JV and then Varsity. That's what the bulletin says."

Yamamoto perked up at this news. "Oh, we haven't had a home soccer game in a while! Can we try to catch a little bit of the game after practice?" he asked, looking at Gokudera instead of where he was going and suddenly feeling a desperate hope as he tripped out the front door of the school building. He really, unexpectedly strongly, wanted the answer to be yes.

Gokudera saw the sudden longing in Yamamoto's face and didn't know how to react. He knew he would be tense, physically and mentally, after tiring himself out in practice and wasn't interested in staying any longer at the school or around other people than he could help it, but needlessly shooting Yamamoto down didn't seem necessary.

He flicked at his bangs and considered it. "Uhm, we'll see," he said.

/

* * *

After practice, Yamamoto still very much wanted to watch the home soccer match with Gokudera. As usual, archery had been released from practice just a little earlier and as he headed towards the lockers from the far end of the baseball field, he caught sight of Gokudera slipping into the building, some hundred or so steps ahead of him. He thought about running to catch up with the other boy, but then decided against it; he didn't want to look like he was chasing after him. Instead, he swung by the football field to check out the score so he would have an excuse to approach Gokudera with a valid reason when he got to the lockers. As soon as he walked into the boys' locker room, he made his way to where the conspicuously silver-haired boy was.

"Hey, I just checked the soccer match score and we're tied," he announced to Gokudera's back. "Two to two!"

Gokudera had just pulled his shirt off so he could switch into his casual clothes. "Is that supposed to be a good thing? It's not like we're winning," he said disinterestedly without turning around, keeping his back to Yamamoto and the other boys. "And can this wait until at least after I change?"

"Well, we're not losing at least," said Yamamoto, ignoring the second comment and also starting to change next to his friend. He tried to keep up his enthusiasm in hopes that Gokudera would eventually join in. "Since it's a tie, the game could go either way now! JV lost, you know, so I really hope that Varsity's going to win. We should definitely go see the match for at least a couple of minutes and cheer them on or something!"

"Mhm," Gokudera responded noncommitantly as he briskly pulled on his shirt. He decided to keep on the shorts that he was wearing and finally turned around to properly face Yamamoto. "I don't know if I'm feeling very up for this. You can't watch the game by yourself?"

"C'mon, that's so boring! Fifteen minutes, that's it, yeah?"

Gokudera stretched his shoulders, wincing a little at the stretch in his archery muscles, and gave a small sigh. "Alright. Fifteen minutes."

/

They went to the soccer field and sat at the home team side of the bleachers where a couple of their peers were also sitting. Whereas the two, as well as the other boys in the crowd, were mostly silent except for the occasional outburst, the girls around them made continuous unrelated comments. It wasn't as though Gokudera had any particular interest in what they were saying, but their shrill fangirling voices made their way into his head.

"Oh. My God," said one of the girls, who seemed to be either freshman or sophomore. Without turning to look, Gokudera could already tell that she was the type to constantly flick her hair and giggle like mad over nothing. "I changed my mind. That one over there, number 18? I think he's the hottest. Ugh, why do all the good-looking ones have to go to other schools?"

"He's not all that," said another girl. She, like the first girl, was making no attempt to keep from being heard by possibly everyone on the bleachers. "He's okay, he's pretty up there, but he's not the best. Number 7's not bad. And we so too have some good-looking guys at our school!"

"You must be kidding me. Name one, just one, that can be called hot! And yeah, number 7's pretty cute, but he's short."

"He's still taller than you, isn't he? And besides, 18's not that much taller than him."

"18's like a foot taller. _And_ he's hotter."

"I don't know what either of you are talking about. In my opinion, 14 is the best. He looks like he could be a celebrity," loudly jumped in yet another freshman girl. "He has such long legs and he's _just_ my type," she gushed in a sappy tone that made Gokudera cringe.

A few more minutes of having this type of commentary for background noise left no doubt in Gokudera's mind that these girls had obviously not come to watch the game but to cruise the boys on the other team. Even though their commentary wasn't about him or anyone that he knew, he still felt very annoyed, more annoyed than usual, at having to endure this trite and found himself impatiently glancing at his watch every so often. The only strange thing about his sudden annoyance was that he felt unduly bothered by the girls.

Although he was extremely irritated by the airheaded gossip that the girls near him were practically broadcasting about the opposing team's members, he couldn't help himself from sneaking a look of his own at the players that the girls were talking about, though he did it far more inconspicuously with his chill demeanor. In his opinion, pretty much all of them were good-looking, or at least decent enough for him, not that he would or could say so to anyone. Instead of trying to follow the boys who were running about on the field, he focused on the ones on the bench, limply slouching in his seat and limply gazing.

Perhaps it was because he was just too tired in the current moment, but he didn't run through any sexual-themed scenarios with the boys. He still felt, very much, a raw desire towards the boys, but it was much less explicit than before, much less hopeful. Imagining making out or more with them in the face of inflexible reality under the waning sunshine was too hard and required a lively energy that he couldn't muster up in the current moment. He just looked and wordlessly, silently, wanted.

"Man, that was super close!" Yamamoto suddenly said loudly, bumping Gokudera and making him unpleasantly start, when a shoot from one of their school players bounced off a goalpost of the opposing team's net. "I can't believe that didn't go in!"

"What?" Gokudera looked around, heard the girls behind him still gossiping in terrible freedom about boys, flaunting their ability to do what fear of social rejection kept him from doing, and just wanted to leave. "Yeah, sure, whatever, let's go." When Yamamoto started to protest that it hadn't been fifteen minutes yet, he waved him off, making an impatient shooing gesture with his hand and shaking his head. "The girls behind us – they're annoying me."

Yamamoto didn't appreciate this sudden announcement, less so that Gokudera didn't seem to care at all about him, but he heard the tension underlying Gokudera's voice and nodded cautiously. "Alright," he said slowly and unwillingly, "We'll go then."

Taking up their bags, they hit the road, Gokudera leading the way with his hands deep in his pockets and without looking back.

Yamamoto followed him closely behind, feeling a little miffed, despite himself, at the other boy's sudden demand to leave. After a moment, he couldn't help saying, "You know, if it was just the girls bothering you, we could have just moved somewhere else and still watched the game." There was no reply or even a reaction, so after a moment, he continued talking. "And it's not like you were even watching the game. You were just staring–"

"–Oh yeah? What was I staring at, then?" Gokudera's interruption sounded almost playful, almost joking, and maybe it would have been on normal circumstances, but now it was cut with a barely perceptible undertone of challenge. He hadn't even turned around to talk.

Yamamoto had been about to say that he had been staring at the guys on the bench, but he realized that saying that now would not only sound strange, but was also unwise. He thought about saying, "I was just going to say that you were staring off into space. Chill," but then amended it at the last minute. "At … space, I guess," was what he settled with, wondering how Gokudera would respond.

"Hmm. Okay," said Gokudera, his unsettling tone the same as before and his reply as reserved as all the rest of his behavior had been for the past few days.

"Well … weren't you?" Yamamoto felt sure that if he knew Gokudera at all, he knew that the generally thoughtful boy wasn't the type to blank out, especially not when he was facing people, but he wanted a clear answer from Gokudera himself.

No reply. Yamamoto glanced over at him just in time to catch another frustrating straight-faced half-shoulder shrug.

Resisting the sudden urge in his gut to grab Gokudera by the shoulder, stop him in the middle of the street, and either ask him if he had done anything to put him off or confront him flat-out about the way he had been acting, Yamamoto tried to shrug the frustrating gesture off for the moment and continue talking, completely unaware that he was playing further into the danger zone.

"Uh, anyways, as I was saying. You were just staring into space. So I don't get why the girls were bothering you so much that–"

"–You know," Gokudera said, interrupting again. "You seem to be commenting a lot about what I look at these days." He glanced back at Yamamoto quickly, making the pointy silver strands of his hair whirl about his head, and then turned back away just as fast.

Yamamoto was so stunned at the second, purposely rude interruption, that for a moment, he couldn't think of anything to say. Then he sputtered, "So? Why does that bother you?" He tried to calm his rising sense of irritation but found it difficult – if Gokudera was being touchy with him because he was physically tired, then he was emotionally tired of taking this sort of treatment from the other boy. "Hey, what's the problem?"

"Nothin'. I'm just sayin'. It's just that I've noticed that you concern yourself with what I look at pret-ty darn often now."

Gokudera didn't dare push things further in that moment by shrugging again, but he spoke in a tone of voice that he knew was aggravatingly casual. He purposely emphasized each of the two syllables in the word 'pretty' because that sounded slightly condescending, which was the effect that he was going for, but didn't say 'damn' stead of 'darn' as he usually would because that sounded downright like he was looking for a fight, and he wasn't willing to get so far just yet.

"What the …" This time, Yamamoto did reach out and stop Gokudera. He kept his grip on the other boy's shoulder as he spoke. "What are you even getting at?

Gokudera jerked away but didn't continue walking. He tilted his head. "What do you think I'm getting at?"

"I don't know, Gokudera, I don't know." Yamamoto didn't appreciate being talked to in this purposely vague, restricted way from Gokudera, who, until just about a week ago, had been fairly open and out-and-out with him. He felt his level of patience dropping and his level of frustration spiking upwards. "Will you stop playing games and just tell me already?"

Even if Gokudera had wanted to tell him, he couldn't have. There was no way to explain his frustration, the sense that all his efforts and affections went on a one-way street with no return, like one of his arrows shot into the vacuum of space. The deep worry that he would never get any of it returned. Added with the stress about his secret meeting with the hustler, something which he might have at least slightly bragged about had the hustler been female, and not knowing how he was going to, if was going to, tell anyone about his sexuality, it was no wonder he had inverted into himself. When he saw that the pedestrian crossing streetlight a couple of meters away had turned to green, he shook his bangs in front his face and started walking again, across the street, at a much faster pace than before. Somehow, his pride prevented him from feeling like he was running away.

"Look, did you not have a good practice or something?" Yamamoto asked, calling and running after him after getting over a shocked pause at the brief abandonment. "Or is this is about the girls? Actually, is this even about the girls anymore?"

"Look, will you stay out of my business?" Gokudera retorted. "What I look at or what I don't, or what I tell you or what I don't is entirely my call, okay? Just let it go and forget it."

"This is about the girls, then, isn't it?" Yamamoto wasn't about to let himself get shot down without having at least some sort of hypothesis for why Gokudera had pulled the guns on him. "I mean, you weren't this pissy with me before we came across them."

"Maybe it is about the girls, then," Gokudera snapped, stopping at the end of the road and whirling around again with another whirling flash of silver. "Since _you_ seem _so_ set on thinking that it is." He looked straight back at Yamamoto with a bright glare, knowing that the other boy wouldn't be able to catch the depth of the situation with the vague and antagonizing response he had given him.

"Gokudera_!_ What's _up_ with you?" If it was anyone but Yamamoto, they would have done more than just raise their voice.

It was Gokudera who took the liberty, and also the recklessness, of going to the next step and cussing. "Oh, I don't know," he barked sarcastically back. "Why don't you tell me since you're the one who's fucking stalking me now?"

"I'm not stalking you! If anything, it's _you_ who's stalking random people! You spend so much time staring at everyone else that it's like an obsession with you!"

"And what's so damned wrong with looking at people, then? At least I don't get caught at it, unlike you!" Gokudera's voice was going husky with stress – talking about looking at people made him remember how he was looking at the boys and that made him feel uncomfortably self-conscious. "You think _I_ haven't noticed how _you_ keep on glancing at me every two seconds?! The fuck is up with that?"

Yamamoto flushed at the last statement, but even with his rising temper his response came fast and his defense was offensive. "Don't give me that shit when you _know_ that I only started checking up on you _after_ you started up this act! And you think that _I_ don't know how you've been _lying_ to me all week?!"

"_What_ act, huh? Maybe this is just the way I _am_, did you think of that? Why don't you stop accusing people of lying and just _shut_ the _hell_ up when you don't even know anything?!"

"Oh, _that_'s rich! _Someone_'s in denial. You know I've sat and watched how you stare at every single guy in this _entire_ neighborhood and then turn _right_ around and tell me that you were zoning out?! _Don't_ you tell me you weren't fucking lying!"

Gokudera almost swallowed his tongue when he heard the part about how he stared at guys, but his face was so set in an expression of sneering fury that his shock didn't show. What's more, after a horrible split second in which he had felt the edge of an abyss right behind him, a rush of adrenaline kicked in and he started pushing, lashing out, much harder than before now that he knew what desperation felt like. But even in the midst of it all, he didn't lose his head. There was an innate consciousness sharp inside of him, terrified of his secrets being found out, which kept him from losing control. With that self-protective consciousness, there was a sense of wanting to severely hurt the boy in front of him in any way that he could if that meant that he would be kept from being vulnerable.

"You know what? _Fuck_ you! Maybe the reason why I look at other guys is because I'm looking for friends to replace clingy _shits_ like you!" he snarled. Putting the hatred in his voice came easy. Later, he would remember how easy, and wonder about himself, but in that moment he just wanted to fight. By this point, both of them were so running on adrenaline that it was only the years of friendship that they'd had that kept them from turning the fight physical.

Yamamoto was too angry to really notice the cussing anymore. But he heard Gokudera's tone and his overall message of rejection and indulged in his own reaction of slashing back – the hurt and confusion and frustration that Gokudera kept on pushing him away despite his best efforts would come later for him also.

"Like _hell _you are!" he yelled. "What makes you think _anyone_ wants to be friends with an icicle like you, then?!"

"Oh I don't know, maybe that you won't fucking leave me _alone_ when I've made it clear that I _don't _want you around?!"

"_Bull_shit! Don't even pretend that you've been coming clean with _anything_, when you've been acting like a shady _bastard_ all week!"

"And you've been acting like a needy _bitch_!" Gokudera hurled back, painfully aware that he really hadn't been coming clean about his recent realization with his sexuality and becoming harsher for it. "What makes you think you're so fucking _entitled_ to _my life?!_ Get your _own_ life!"

"You know what, I fucking _will!_ I'm not fucking _doing_ this!" Yamamoto was so upset that he hardly knew where to turn in the city sector he had lived in for all his life, but he knew that he wanted to get away. He jerked back from Gokudera like he was pulling back after getting a burn and started walking away, taking long strides as though he were proud but never having felt more bizarrely belittled by someone he hadn't known he cared about so much.

He strode down the street and turned the first corner that he came across, needing to be as far and as separated from Gokudera as possible. When he ducked around the corner so that Gokudera couldn't see him, he started running and didn't stop until he reached his house. He couldn't think. Slamming through the front door, the only marginally positive thing he felt was that no one, not even his dad, was around to see his miserable state. He threw all his things on the floor, collapsed on his bed, and fell asleep before he got his breathing under control.

/

* * *

While Yamamoto slept to forget, Gokudera similarly tried to blank his mind, but he found it impossible.

He wandered back and forth across his room restlessly, feeling his head hurt both mentally and physically from the stress, as his mind frantically jumped among his seemingly infinite problems.

'Why the _hell_ did he have to confront me about this anyway? He's keeping a watch on me like I'm his fucking _slave_ or something, that attention whore, and so _what_ if I have a personal tangent and oh fucking hell he _knows_ I've been looking at guys and I tried to play it off but I don't know if he bought it and Tsuna is probably wondering right now what the fuck happened and I don't know what I'm supposed to do or say to them tomorrow and just fuccckkkk!' The sense of fury and panic and suspense was incredible, but it wasn't the end of what Gokudera felt.

'Why did I have to be like this anyway? It's causing me nothing but trouble,' he thought quietly. 'I'm losing my friends; I'm losing my goddamn life; I'm losing … me. And at the same time I know I _can't_ control my sexuality, so I can't blame myself, but it would just be so much _easier_ if I wasn't like this. I mean… it just would.'

After this brief moment of self-pity, Gokudera switched back to panicking.

'But what am I going to fucking _tell_ him tomorrow? I can't just tell him that I blew up at him because I'm stressed about my sexuality – that's so damned awkward to say and it sounds like some sort of confession or apology and I'm not confessing or apologizing to _him_ or to _anyone_ about this. But I still shouldn't have blown up on him like that and I could tell he was really hurt by what I said… he doesn't know that I just said that to hurt him and make him back off and now he probably thinks I _hate_ him and oh jesus, this is really all just _too much!'_

He stopped restlessly pacing and braced both his hands against his bedroom wall, pressing his face against the cold hardness and looking for any meager sense of security that he could manufacture. He usually didn't mind crying on the rare occasions that he did when he had an exceptionally terrible migraine, because that had the valid purpose of physically relaxing him and making his pain ease up, but crying wouldn't help with the pain he had in his head now. So he gripped the wall and did his damnedest to hold his tears back.

It didn't work. But in a minute it was over.

Gokudera wiped his eyes carefully, methodologically, so that there was no wetness left and turned around to lean on the wall. Quarter 1 was about to end, it was autumn and it was night and he had crashed all his relationships and it was dark both outside and inside and he felt like a hunter with nothing to hunt, who had lost himself in the jungle, and who just realized that he hadn't brought any of his equipment with him. He didn't really have consciousness of anything except that he was exhausted and that he didn't have any options anymore.

Gokudera's hand went to his back pocket. Taking out his phone, he looked at himself on the black turned-off reflective surface. Then he dropped his phone on his bed. His wallet and keys and everything else he had on him, including his clothes, followed.

Then he did what he could to induce comatoseness by sleeping in the shower.

* * *

**I've never felt the panic of being closeted. The emotions here come from different situations that I've had. **

**I debated for the longest time on whether or not I should make Gokudera cry or not. Then I decided to because he's tear-jerking out of frustration, not really sadness, and I think that's reasonable.**

**'Sleeping' in the shower is something I do sometimes. It's not exactly sleeping, but I sort of blank out for a period of time. It's sort of just tapping down everything, feelings, thoughts, everything, and just focusing on physical sensation. **

**Hopefully the next chapter will take me far less time to write. Thanks for being patient with me so far.**

**Review, please.**


	20. Chapter 20

**Although it's not required, it could be of some use to reread the end of Chapter 2 and the beginning of Chapter 4 before reading this chapter just because some of the stylistic situations in this chapter are meant to be parallels to those chapters.**

**Rereading the end of Chapter 7 is strongly encouraged if you don't remember what happened there.**

**[Hint: the hustler]**

**/**

**Anyways, before I overwhelm/bore you any further, I'll be leaving…**

/

* * *

When Gokudera finally turned off the hot water, his head was empty and his bathroom was full of mist. He'd turned up the temperature of the water by degrees as his body had grown accustomed to the level of heat and stood so long and limp under the water pressure that the back of his neck and his shoulders were numb. Despite thoroughly warming his neck, however, his throat still felt scratchy from all the yelling he'd done.

He stepped out of the shower cubicle and took a towel off the rack, keeping his eyes carefully and needlessly averted from the fogged-up mirror. As he methodologically dried himself, he thought that he might hesitate at the bathroom door before opening it to expose himself to the autumn afternoon chill, but was not surprised either when he let himself out as naturally as he would on any other day.

He was surprised at how cold it was, though.

Chilled by the breeze from the open bedroom window, he uncertainly looked for some clean new clothes, ignoring what he'd cast off on the bed. After a minute of shivering and looking around, he wrenched on what he could find and wrenched his backpack open for his planner. He didn't need to look at his schedule to know that he didn't have any classes with Yamamoto the next day, but having it in black print in front of his face was somehow both worrying and reassuring. His waterlogged brain seemed to wrangle itself a little freer.

'He and I have to make up sometime. It's going to have to happen,' he thought with a miserable confidence that didn't quite make it to being hope. 'Is it better or worse to put it off? Should I actually look for him, if for no other reason than to let him know that I'm still a part of his world and he a part of mine? Or is it my responsibility to make him an apology even though I have no clue how to do it or even exactly why I should have to?' Anything seemed better to Gokudera than meeting Yamamoto in last period math class in two days and being given the cold shoulder.

'But what do I _say_ to him? Oh, yeah, sorry about that last night and I didn't mean to be neglecting you for the past few weeks but I've had stuff on my mind?' He gripped his still damp hair in a stereotypical gesture of frustration that was strangely sincere. 'But then he'll want to know what that stuff is and it's not like I can tell him… I mean, I could, but this is just so _not _the right time…'

He shivered again and looked out the open window where the chill was coming from but made no move to close it. Huddling into himself with the lists of his personal problems in his head and his schoolwork in his hand, he didn't resist the unshakable feeling that maybe this was a good time to play dead and use his blankets to wrap himself into a capsule, to try to time warp into a better life, or into something even better and more impossible, like a cocoon, to try for a metamorphosis.

'It's not like I'll have transformed into someone else when I wake up tomorrow, though.' It wasn't a sad realization or even a realization. 'I'll still be very much me, just with more problems because then I'll have made my school life go to _shit_ like I just did with my social life… I'm so _exhausted_ though – I don't _want_ to do anything but I can't just go to sleep but I don't feel awake either and I'm _so_ fucking confused and it's so _goddamn_ _cold!_'

Gokudera knew he was being perfectly idiotic and more than a little masochistic for not shutting the window and suffering for it, but he simply couldn't stand the idea of enclosing himself in his restrictive closet of a bedroom when he already felt himself stuck in a hole. He wanted to get up and go away somewhere, perhaps for a walk, but what was the point when there wasn't anywhere for him to go to?

'Well, _anything_ must be better than sitting here doing nothing and sniveling and being pathetic,' he finally told himself with a loud sniff, wiping his runny nose and feeling that if he was already sick, there was nothing to fear in getting himself sicker. He staggered up with his planner in one hand and his backpack in the other. 'I need to buck the fuck up already,' he told himself disgustedly. 'Maybe going outside and freezing my ass off will at least wake me up.'

Clinging to that thought, he exited his house, going down the stairs to the ground floor where the exit of the apartment building was. He let go of the front door gently, letting his fingers slip from the handle without closing the door, but the wind, which was already sending the first of the fallen rust-colored leaves scratching across the asphalt street, shut the door with a muffled thump behind him. The whoosh of the wind in the alley felt like the piston effect rush of air in a metro tunnel before the train slammed into the station to take him where he wanted, and suddenly Gokudera, even despite the cold weather, was reminded of why he had his habit of seeking refuge outdoors.

Since the daylight was already rapidly waning and the streetlights were on, Gokudera walked towards the closest streetlight and set up camp in the circle of its warmthless glow. As he sat down, he slid his loose grip down the lamppost and all of a sudden, almost inevitably, thought of the hustler.

'Where is he now?' he wondered.

In his mind, he could still see that dark haired, mysterious, gorgeous hustler lightly swinging from the post with both hands and casting an unwavering stare at the people passing by. "What do you want, kid?" he had asked, and then led him to the park clearing and blew his mind as easily as how the nighttime smokers at that very same park puffed at their cigarettes.

It was hard to tell if what he felt about that beautiful, terrible, gone hustler was anger or sadness or desperation masquerading as either. He thought of that mussed dark hair that wouldn't leave his mind and still wanted to stroke it, run his fingers through it and feel that raw texture, but also felt the unmistakable desire to rip it all out by the roots.

'No, that's not right, this isn't his fault,' he muttered under his breath, mouthing the words as though that would convince himself but rubbing his fingers together absentmindedly. 'I mean, _I_ went to him, that was my decision, or at least, I don't know, it was my feet that moved me to him, but why the fuck did _he_ have to show up at _my_ park, anyway?'

He remembered how he had sat down in the park clearing with the hustler, feeling unbearably young though there was probably barely a five-year difference between them. It was chillingly embarrassing to think of how he had gotten hard in about four seconds and though the memory of his hormones seemingly acting on their own made him want cuss his mouth dry, the words that the hustler had spoken to him still cut through his chagrin: _"So what do you want to do? Do you want to talk, or…?"_

Gokudera shook his head roughly. 'This is so fucking ridiculous. Since when did I start wanting the stupid advice of some homeless _shit _junkie who probably blew all the money I gave him on his next shoot-up? What the hell would _he_ know when he probably dropped out of school in the fucking 6th grade? Besides, he may not even be… ' He gripped the lamppost a little tighter. '…He could just be fucking around with guys for the money, it's not like he can afford to be picky.'

But despite it all, the hustler's words kept on echoing in his head.

/

He leaned his head against the lamppost and unfocused his eyes and saw himself walking to school in the dusky morning. His bag slung haphazardly over one shoulder as always, his posture maybe a little hunched over as he walked in the breezy morning wind-chill, his feet moving forward mostly due to sheer force of habit.

When he got to the school gates, the hustler was there, leaning against the bars of the fence with the same quasi casualness as he had had at the park, except that his searching gaze, usually sweeping, was directed only at him. When Gokudera was three meters away, the hustler again flashed a sudden smile, there and gone like a muscle spasm.

"Uh, so…" he said, when after a minute Gokudera had still not moved from staring at him with a straight face.

Then Gokudera partly turned around and looked over his shoulder. At the end of the street, Yamamoto had just turned the first corner and was walking straight towards the school gates, head down and staring at the ground and short thick hair barely ruffled by the wind.

Gokudera wasted no time. Stuffing his hand into his back pocket for his wallet with the same purposeful gesture that the hustler used to stuff payment into his pockets, he took out a few bills and handed them firmly to the hustler, putting the money directly into his hand. He went up close so that their heads were almost side-by-side like they had been at the park clearing after the incident.

"I don't want anything else," he said lowly. "But you see him?" Without looking back, he jerked his thumb towards Yamamoto, who was still coming obliviously down the street. "I need you to talk to him."

"Talk to who?" The hustler smiled faintly in confusion.

Gripping the point of the hustler's shoulder with his left hand and stretching out his right arm all the way, Gokudera directed the hustler's attention towards the boy to whom he wanted to tell his biggest secret about himself but was too afraid to. "_Him_. That's him. Tell him for me, will you?" He stopped pointing and nudged the hustler forward. "Please?"

The hustler didn't ask for any clarification on what it was that he was being asked to tell. He didn't comment on why Gokudera couldn't go and say it himself. He put his newly received money away and went, on Gokudera's behalf, to meet Yamamoto halfway down the street.

Gokudera watched him go, the most vulgar messenger angel that ever lived, walking confident with a few more bills that he had received for nothing much out of the ordinary for him except possibly overturning someone's life twice. He looked as though he was swaggering into the wind, with nothing showing that he was going against nature except his messy hair, which seemed to shout the I-just-had-sex-look louder and louder with every step.

When he saw the hustler reach Yamamoto and tap him for his attention, Gokudera turned his face away to the bars of the gates and froze. He stared through the bars and then just closed his eyes.

/

When his eyes opened and he refocused them, he was back in the alley in front of his apartment. The hustler was nowhere around; Yamamoto was nowhere near him. The wind was still blowing, a few degrees lower than before, tousling his hair like the rush off a train pulling out of the station. He was gripping the lamppost for dear life.

There wasn't a thought or an emotion that was discernable in his head. Gokudera let go of the post and turned around to lean on the cold metal, looking for all the world like a idle tramp when he felt more like he was struggling with a conundrum to make him the next great philosopher of the times if he managed to solve it.

Before he could make himself feel stupid as well as indecisive and cowardly all at the same time, he got out his history textbook. Looking through the grimy lenses of his reading glasses, Gokudera distracted himself with the affairs of other miserable people in countries and times far far away.

/

* * *

"… Wake up … Takeshi, wake up …"

Yamamoto became slowly conscious of someone attempting to wake him. The someone was shaking him by the shoulder, just like he'd wanted to do to Gokudera more than once during the fight. Sleeping had blunted a lot of the sharpness of the words that had been hurled either way during the fight, but it hadn't killed the emotions that had gone with it.

Feeling a surge of annoyance at being woken up from his state of oblivion, he roughly jerked away from his dad's touch.

"I'm up," he muttered, his voice coming out scratchy.

"Are you feeling sick?" asked his dad. "You look like you just fell asleep as soon as you got home."

"I don't know. Maybe," Yamamoto said, not moving to get up and purposely not mentioning that he hadn't so much fallen asleep as tried to put himself to sleep. "Or maybe I'm just tired. Or something." He didn't care what he said as long as it made his dad and his questions go away faster.

Yamamoto's father looked at his son for a moment, saw how listlessly he was lying on the bed with all his outdoor clothes still on him, and decided to hold off his inquiry until later. He slowly said, "Okay. Well, dinner's in a few minutes," and then left.

When the door closed behind his dad as he left, it was only then that Yamamoto sat up. It was apparently dinnertime, which meant that about three hours had passed since the fight and the end of sports practice. On a regular day, he and Gokudera and Tsuna would have finished their homework session a little while ago and would be going to their individual homes. He wished that he could pretend that this was the case, but even with his reluctant mind the reality was just too obvious and harsh to ignore.

He got out his phone to check for the time. The time was a little past eight and he had missed one call and gotten two texts from Tsuna.

"_Guys where r u? How r u we doing hw today?_" was the first text.

And then, "_Srsly whats going on?_"

'Good question,' Yamamoto thought bitterly. 'But I'm even more clueless than you are.' He turned his phone off, threw it on his bed, and went out of his bedroom to the kitchen where his father had already set dinner.

"So, uh," his dad said when they had both sat down at the table and had gotten in a few bites of their food. "You feeling okay? Did you meet your friends after practice or just decided that you needed to take a nap?"

"We didn't meet to do homework." Yamamoto spoke with his mouth full – he just wanted to finish his food and retreat back to his room as fast as possible. "I'm going to do it after dinner."

"How come you didn't meet?"

Yamamoto shrugged. "I was just tired. Practice and all, you know," he said, trying to fake it cool.

"Takeshi, you know that first quarter's ending this week, right?" said the dad with some concern about the seemingly careless attitude that his son was suddenly displaying. 'You can't let your grades drop right now when your marks are about to go on record."

"Yes, I _know_, dad. I _said_ that I'm getting on it after dinner," replied Yamamoto with a little more bite to his tone than he had before. For some reason, being reminded of the first quarter break and reports made his fight with Gokudera an even more urgent matter in his mind, as though he thought the fight and the bad feelings that went with it would go on his permanent record for the quarter along with his grades.

"And you're sure you're feeling okay? Did something happen? Had a fight with your friends?"

"How _bad_ does my relationship with my friends seem to you that every time I'm not the most chipper person in the world, you think we had a fight?" Yamamoto burst out, looking straight into his dad's face for the first time since being woken up with a boldness that belied his insecurity. "Do I look _that _incapable of being friends with anyone?"

"Whoa, calm down," the father said, realizing that his son was in an even worse mood than he had supposed. "I wasn't implying anything about you or your friends. Besides, Takeshi… it's nothing to be ashamed about to have had a fight with your friends – even best friends fight sometimes."

"Well, he and I weren't best friends anyway." Yamamoto looked away from his dad almost angrily. "He's been completely ignoring me for the past two weeks."

"Have you tried talking to him about–"

"–We fought _because_ I tried to talk to him about it. And, and anyway, I _don't_ want to talk about this anymore," Yamamoto said, upset with himself for having inadvertently admitted to having had a fight.

"Well, at the very least it didn't get physical, did it?" asked the father warily, studying his son's face for any signs and wondering, not without a touch of amazement, who it was that had gotten his normally happy-go-lucky son so incensed.

"No, but I _wish_ it had!" snarled Yamamoto though he didn't really mean it. "One minute it's like he doesn't know I _exist_ and the next he's standing there shooting off his mouth and if I had thought to punch him in the face to make him _shut up_, I _would_ have!" he exploded in a fit of vexation that was more motivated by hurt than anger.

"Come on, you know better than that. Punching someone doesn't solve anything."

"Well, apparently talking doesn't do _anything_ either! He, he says some of the _damnedest_ things you ever heard and I don't know _where_ he gets off saying some of the things he said to me, but, but, he had no _right _to say any of that!" Yamamoto might have started crying out of pure frustration if his rising heat wasn't boiling away his tears. "What have I _ever_ done but take his crap?"

Yamamoto's father couldn't think of anyone that was close enough to his son to get him this personally agitated, who was also someone who would get him this distressed. Tsuna, that sheepish boy who was always ridiculously polite, was out of the question for saying anything that could be remotely described as 'damnedest things.' Gokudera was perhaps a little more likely, as rather more impulsive kid, but he was still an extremely sensible and intelligent boy and it still seemed impossible that he would do anything to make the usually peaceable Yamamoto want to allegedly 'punch him in the face.'

It was all extremely puzzling, which was apparently not only his viewpoint, considering how much his son was floundering.

While his dad was puzzling over his unsolvable predicament, Yamamoto came to the conclusion that he had already said quite enough and had quite enough of anyone else's company for the day.

"I'm done," he muttered, his flash of anger gone as fast as it had come. With that, before his dad could say anything else, he dropped his plates in the sink with a clunk and walled himself back up in his room.

/

* * *

The next day, Tsuna got up bright and early, unlike either of his two friends, to find out what was going on.

Quite to the surprise of his mother, he got up by himself with the use of his cellphone alarm clock and was ready for school almost forty minutes earlier than he needed to be. Since he wasn't sure of Gokudera's address and Yamamoto's house was closer to him anyway, he took his mother's hastily prepared breakfast and headed towards Yamamoto's place.

'I wonder what's going on,' he wondered as he walked briskly. 'Are they okay or did something happen to them during practice? Huh, but that doesn't explain why neither of them, even Yamamoto, didn't answer his phone.'

As he reached Yamamoto's apartment and entered to wait for the elevator, he shrugged to himself. 'Oh well, there's no use asking myself the same questions that I did last night when I'll find out what happened in a minute. I should probably be more worried about my grades really…'

The elevator came and he went up. Getting off on Yamamoto's floor, a little concerned, a bit confused, and very curious, he pressed the doorbell.

Yamamoto's dad, who had just barely gotten his son up and had been getting ready for work, felt a jolt when he heard the doorbell's chime. Feeling bewildered as to who could possibly be calling on the house at this time of day, he finished putting on his clothes quickly and opened the door to look into the absolutely guileless face of Tsuna.

"Oh, hello!" he exclaimed. "Are you here for Takeshi?"

"Hi, yeah, is he here? Sorry about barging in on you this early in the morning."

"No no, it's no problem. He's in the bathroom right now," replied the dad, letting Tsuna in and thinking of the fight that his son had had the other night. He wondered if Tsuna's appearance had anything to do with it. "Uhm, are you feeling okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just fine!" Tsuna chirped as he walked into the living room. "I'm actually here because I want to know if Yamamoto is okay. We didn't meet yesterday for homework, you know."

"I heard..." The father nodded slowly and glanced at the bathroom door, where the sink faucet had just been turned off. "He seemed a bit off yesterday night. You wouldn't happen to know anything about it?"

"Oh, he was feeling off? The last time I saw him was after school and he seemed okay then!"

"Well, maybe he's feeling a little sick," the father said, deciding not to mention that Yamamoto was upset over a fight with someone since Tsuna was clearly even more oblivious than he was. "He'll be done washing up in a minute."

Right then, the bathroom door opened and Yamamoto walked out.

"Oh," he said, when he saw Tsuna and his dad. "Hey."

"Yamamoto! Hey, what's going on? Are you feeling okay?"

'What is he doing in my house this early in the morning!' Yamamoto was thinking to himself, feeling panicked and irritated at the same time. 'Did Gokudera talk to him?' But he said, "Well, I don't exactly feel too good, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I'll talk to you after I get dressed," and firmly closed his bedroom door behind him to throw on his school clothes.

When Yamamoto had closed the door on them, the dad and Tsuna looked at each other.

"He's… not too much of a morning person," said Yamamoto's dad a little apologetically as a cover-up. "He only just woke up. He got up a bit later than usual, see."

"That only sounds like me all the time!" said Tsuna, not put off due to his mounting curiosity. "He sounds a bit sick to me, though, so maybe that's just it?"

"Well… He's not really sick. He's just feeling off because of something that happened at school, apparently. At any rate, did you eat breakfast?"

"Yeah, well sort of. And really? Something that happened at school? It must've been after school, during practice or something. And you don't know what it was?"

"No, he didn't really tell me and I only saw him in the evening after I got off work. Uhm, did you do homework by yourself?" the dad asked tentatively. "Yamamoto did his on his own after dinner."

"Whoa, really? I did my homework by myself too! Gokudera wasn't anywhere around either and I couldn't contact either of them so I figured that something might happened to both of them, like I don't know, some sort of freak accident or something, but this is really weird!"

"Mhm, yeah it is. And I certainly hope that there wasn't any accident, but I'm afraid that I don't know much. Well," the dad looked at the wall clock, wondering how and why his son and Gokudera had fought. "There's some twenty minutes before either of you have to go for school and maybe he'll tell you what's up."

"And he didn't tell you anything about what happened? And what happened to Gokudera, then?"

Right that moment, Yamamoto burst out of his bedroom, fully clothed and with all his things. Perhaps fortunately, he hadn't heard Tsuna's last words. "Dad, I'm leaving, okay?" he said brusquely as he strode into the living room and towards the front door. "Come on, Tsuna."

"You have a good twenty minutes before you have to go," said his dad, pointing at the clock. "And you haven't eaten breakfast either!"

"I'm not hungry and if I am, I'll buy something on the way," said Yamamoto, pulling Tsuna along with him as he walked out the door. "Bye." The front door swung shut.

"Whoa, why the rush?" asked Tsuna after Yamamoto had savagely punched the elevator button. "School doesn't start until, like, thirty minutes from now! But anyway, are you feeling okay? What happened?"

"What did my dad tell you?" Yamamoto asked, his worry masked in annoyance. "Did he say anything about me?"

"All he said was that you weren't feeling good about something that happened after school. What happened, by the way? And did something happen to your phone?"

'_What_ am I supposed to _say_?' Yamamoto furiously thought to himself. 'It's going to come out sooner or later that Gokudera and I fought, but I can't tell him anything when I can barely figure it out myself! And why am I being confronted about this five seconds after I wake up?!'

"_Nothing_ happened to my phone," he said, putting an edge to his voice as he jabbed again at the elevator button. "And I didn't have it off. I just didn't feel like picking it up."

"Oh. Uhm… why? Were you feeling tired or –"

"I had a _fight_, okay?" It was much easier to just blurt out things than to think about them. "With Gokudera. Or didn't he tell you?"

The elevator came and Yamamoto jumped in, pressing the door-closing button almost before Tsuna had managed to get in properly. They started down.

"No! You had a fight with _Gokudera_? Well, that explains why neither of you showed up, but this is crazy! Why'd you fight?"

"How would _I_ know? _He_'s the one who started it!" Yamamoto turned on Tsuna. "But anyway, what are _you_ doing here?"

"What do you mean? I was worried so I came to check up on you."

"Look, I have enough to try to figure out as it is, and I don't you to, I don't need any complications, okay? Ah ffu…" He turned away in frustration, biting his lip. He didn't need any more conflicts with friends. "Just forget it."

"Well…," Tsuna said, a little shocked at Yamamoto's little outburst but understanding that his friend was probably just hurting, "It sounds like the fight was really bad, huh?

"Yeah. It was. It was really bad. Like… _really_ bad. Like…" Yamamoto shook his head at the ground. "I don't even know what I'm freaking saying." He waved his hand in the air, searching for his words. "Like, one minute we were watching the soccer game and doing fine and then he said that he wanted to leave and I was just like what? and then things just _exploded_ and I don't even…! Ah, forget about this too," he said, shaking his head harder. "Just forget about everything!"

"Yamamoto… like, what did Gokudera say? You can't just ignore this, you know…"

"Well, _you_ try talking to him then, see how far _you_ get! 'Cause apparently he doesn't want _me _anywhere near him; he doesn't want me in his _life_! _That_'s what he said!" The elevator reached the ground floor and he barged off. "For _god's sake_, let's _please_ stop talking about this!"

"…Okay," Tsuna said, awed at his friend's behavior and figuring that the safest thing to do for the moment would be to keep quiet.

They walked in silence towards the school. But when they had made the last turn and there was nothing but a straight stretch of road with the school at the end, Tsuna couldn't resist saying something.

He cleared his throat. "Uhm… Do you want me to talk to him? To Gokudera, I mean?"

"…I don't know. No. Maybe. I don't know what he'll say to you."

"Well, it wasn't about me, was it?"

"No, it had nothing to do with you. It… wasn't really about anything, but… " Yamamoto looked up to the sky and then down to his feet. "Somehow it got personal and then... It just… Have you noticed that he's been pulling away from me these past two weeks?"

"Well…" Tsuna scratched his head. "Not really. Has he been?"

"He's just been acting so weird with me. Like, _all_ of a sudden. I _swear_ it's not all in my head! He really has been! He practically confirmed it for me cuz, cuz, he was in such complete denial about it all, but then…" Yamamoto shut himself up as he remembered what Gokudera had said to him when they had been fighting: _"__What__ act, huh? Maybe this is just the way I __am__, did you think of that? Why don't you stop accusing people of lying and just __shut__ the __hell__ up when you don't even know anything?!" _These same words had made him frustrated beyond belief when they had first been said in the street, but now hearing the echo just made him cringe.

"But then what?" Tsuna asked.

Yamamoto shook his head at him. He couldn't come up with the words anymore.

And despite Tsuna's few feeble more attempts to get him to at least complete his sentence, he kept his mouth shut. He walked the rest of the way to school, staring at the ground and slouching under the pressure of the thought that maybe, just maybe, it hadn't been Gokudera who had turned on him, but he who hadn't been paying enough attention, and wondered if it was too much to ask to have someone tap him and just whisper him the answer.

/

* * *

**No excuses this time. They only work for so long, anyway.**

**I had to literally make this entire chapter up. I have not experienced a single emotion in this chapter, ever. Or if I have in the long past, I completely forgot and at any rate, it's not relatable to me now.**

**I hope this chapter wasn't too far-fetched. I rather reverted to my teenage-angsty stuff, didn't I?**

**I also hope the parallels I set up weren't too obvious.**

**If anyone can tell me their experience with fighting with friends, please share. I could use the help.**

**/**

**Thanks, sorry for the delay, and please review!**


	21. Chapter 21

**I was originally going to stretch out the aftermath to a few chapters, but decided to truncate the process (not that my uploading was prompt, but...) because I thought it would get boring. However, I did bear in mind to keep this as realistic as possible. It's interesting – I'm always most displeased with the chapters in which I try to write my own thoughts. **

**As always, I apologize for the delay and for making you [the readers] wait.**

**I'd recommend that you read this chapter in a quiet place; calmly and seriously (or is this true for this entire story?).**

/

* * *

The pale tan bathroom tiles were cold against his bare feet as Gokudera stood in front of the mirror, taking deep slow breaths through his mouth, and waited for his hand to stop its minute trembling. Glancing at himself in quick flickers, feeling very physically conscious, he tried and just managed to resist the instinct to break out in violent shivers.

Despite the sharp jolts that he felt whenever a bit of chilled metal or porcelain touched his bare skin, his mind felt fuzzy, like his blood wasn't flowing fast enough, like his brain wasn't entirely connected to his body. The hot water that he had splashed on himself barely a minute ago was cooling fast in the chilly air and his muscles kept on unpleasantly tensing up even while his brain seemed to be aimlessly drifting in his skull. He sniffed and shook his head; tried to relax.

While his left hand gripped the edge of the sink for support, Gokudera sighed and raised his razor to his throat and scraped as carefully as he ever could. It was a quarter till he even had to get up, he told himself. He had time; he could go at his own pace. He rinsed the lather off his razor, tilted his chin up again, and repeated the process.

As he shaved with a serious concentration that he knew outmatched the effort for anything else he had done for the past few weeks, Gokudera held his silver bangs out of his eyes and quietly mused over why he was suddenly being so inordinately careful with himself.

'So _what_ if I cut myself?' he seriously questioned, running the edge of the blade down his throat with the unchanging sureness from before. 'By accident or otherwise?' He rinsed his razor again and shook off the moisture, sniffed again, before continuing to shave, his jaw set. 'Not like this'll ever manage anything worse than a nick or a small cut. It'll sting some, that's it. That's it.'

As he kept on gently scraping the sharp tiny blades across his neck and jaw, Gokudera really couldn't think of a concrete reason for why he shouldn't cut himself. Provided that it was under his jawline, it wouldn't even show, it would heal completely and tracelessly in a few weeks, and it would, most importantly, be a distraction for the moment.

'Hmm. I hear about it all the time, at any rate. On TV shows, movies. Hysterical girls scampering off to slash at their wrists after a little break-up that everybody else saw coming ten kilometers away.' If he didn't already have his chin up, he would have put it up out of cockiness, though thinking about break-ups was making him irritable. 'Stupid twats.' But though he saw the idiocy in the stereotypical cutting of the type he saw on screen, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had a better grasp, perhaps even a nobler reason, for cutting. If nothing else, he would at least know just exactly how miserably pathetic he would be behaving if he cut.

'Do teenage boys cut at all? For any reason?' he wondered while continuing to shave with a steady hand. 'Or is this just me?' He rinsed his razor a little rougher than before, shaking the water off with a touch of viciousness. He sniffed hard. 'Then again, does it _matter?_ I'm so fucking different from any other kid already – What's a little more difference? Might as well be freakish all the way."

His argument was almost convincing.

He couldn't understand it himself, but he wished that his hand would somehow slip entirely of its own accord and make an accidental incision, just enough to bother him with the pain but no more. It was almost terribly unfortunate that he had such stifling control of himself.

Despite his hiking angst, the razor moved as smoothly and softly as ever across his throat. Gokudera looked hard at the mirror like he was trying to stare himself down.

'This makes no fucking sense. Stupid teenage hormones… Stupid survival instinct. _Stupid_ fucking _me_,' he thought, with frustration and anger but curiously without bitterness. '_Why_ can't I just let it go for once and stop over_analyzing_ everything? Fuck it. _Fuck_ it.'

Gokudera dropped the razor, letting it clatter loudly in the sink for a bit of cheap satisfaction, before he glanced at the time and started washing up, splashing as much water as conceivably possible to beat the clock.

/

Twenty minutes later, he had thrown down something like breakfast, had rechecked his school things, and had generally stressed himself out over the school day which had yet to even start. He had a quiz second period that he was starting to feel very anxious about, his brain still felt fuzzy, he had wasted some fifteen minutes doing nothing but shaving for the hell of it. And yet, as he glanced over his reflection and rubbed his perfectly smooth jaw before he had to leave his apartment, he wondered that he didn't feel any particular dread at going to school.

'I just _have_ to go to school, that's all,' he told himself as he headed for the door, feeling very much his insignificance in the face of the universe. 'It's as simple and unquestionable as that. I just have to because it's what I do.' Forcing himself to do things cleared some of the clutter in his mind.

And so, Gokudera pulled his bangs out from his sights and put his faith in nothing more than sheer force of habit as he walked out of his apartment to face just another day.

/

* * *

The bell rang for lunch.

Yamamoto started packing up his things as usual, tossing his pencils and pens in his pencilcase and stuffing his notebook into his backpack, but without the regular excited rush. As he walked out the classroom door with his other peer classmates, one of them tapped him on the shoulder as they walked up the stairs to where the junior lockers were.

"Hey, what's for lunch, d'you know?" the classmate asked.

"Ah, no," Yamamoto replied easily, absentminded with wondering about what he should be expecting to happen at lunch. "I don't."

"Well, I guess we'll find out when we get to the cafeteria, I guess."

"Yeah. Guess I will," Yamamoto said, more to himself than to his classmate, and went to his locker. This obvious statement, however, didn't give him any sense of relief as muscle memory induced his fingers to spin his locker lock open. He put his backpack in, shut his locker, and waited for Tsuna to do the same.

They headed down to the cafeteria and impatiently stood in line for their lunch.

When he'd gotten his tray and walked over to his table and didn't see Gokudera or Gokudera's backpack anywhere, Yamamoto knew immediately that Gokudera must be purposely avoiding him. From Tsuna's slightly uneasy expression as he sat down in their regular spots on the long table, he had clearly come to the same conclusion.

"Guess he's not eating lunch," Yamamoto said bluntly for lack of how to put the obvious absence of their third member in a subtle manner. "I don't think he's in the cafeteria at all."

"You think?" Tsuna looked behind and swept his eyes across the room in futile hope of catching a glimpse of the characteristic silver hair. He didn't want to think that his friend was brooding somewhere on his own, starving and miserable. "Sure he's not sitting somewhere else?"

"He doesn't _have_ anywhere else to sit," Yamamoto said harshly, resentment showing through his tone as well as his words. "And if he is and he's sitting with someone else, then _fuck_ him." Though he had spent all of the day before lunchtime halfway hoping that Gokudera wouldn't show up so that he wouldn't have to deal with the fight, Yamamoto couldn't help feeling personally offended that Gokudera had dared to not show his face at all; almost felt like he was being taunted.

Tsuna was quiet for a moment, a bit uncomfortable and a bit surprised, and both he and the only other member of their normal trio ate without speaking for a few minutes. Then the brown-haired boy said, "You know, I haven't seen him at all today. Did he even come to school?"

"Who knows? _I_ haven't seen him."

It was, in fact, impossible for either of them to figure out on their own if Gokudera was at school at all because the two almost always never saw the third until lunchtime as they shared only one class in last period. After a bit of hesitation, Tsuna tapped the boy nearest to him for help.

"Hey, you seen Gokudera anywhere today?"

"Mhm. Might have glanced by him in the hallway, I think," came the reply. "Oh. He's not here."

"Uhm, no. And I don't know if he's in school."

"He's in school," put in another boy that was nearby. "I've seen him."

"Alright, thanks."

"Yeah. Where is he now?" asked the boy carelessly.

"We don't know," Yamamoto put in. His voice had lost the sharpness from before but not the curtness.

If the other boys noticed Yamamoto's tone, they didn't react to it. "Well, okay," they said, in a manner meaning "It don't concern me," and went back to chatting about whatever it was that they had been chatting about before the interruption.

"Well, he's in school, at least," said Tsuna unnecessarily.

"Yes, and not here," retorted Yamamoto, also unnecessarily.

There was nothing to talk about, but Tsuna, highly unsettled with the moody silence, made a good faith effort to pass the time. "Well," he said struggling for a distraction. "It's Wednesday, can you believe it? I only realized that the last period. Feels like the week should be over already."

"Yup," came the disinterested reply, monotonous and automatic. "And the worst hasn't even hit us yet. I'm really not ready for the end of the quarter. Friday's going to kill me."

"Yeah. Uhm… talking about Friday. So, so are we going to meet for homework after school, or…?"

"Yeah. I suppose. I don't know if I'll be of much use." It went unspoken that without Gokudera, their local whiz and most prevalent member of their study group, their homework session wasn't going to be nearly as productive as it could be, but it simply couldn't be helped.

The two finished their lunch about ten minutes earlier than usual. Despite that Gokudera was no amazing conversationalist and that especially recently he had had limited interaction with both of the two, his absence had been unusual and sorely noticed.

'What's he trying to prove by not showing up to lunch anyway?' Yamamoto asked himself as he positively stalked up the floors to the junior lockers where the juniors in general usually spent their free time socializing. 'Trying to show that he can make it on his own? Hell, no one was in any doubt of that to begin with, least of all _me._' He opened his locker, got out his backpack for an excuse for something to do, and slammed the locker shut.

'But what really _is_ his deal?' he questioned for the umpteenth time as he slumped down opposite the lockers on a bench that was up against the outside wall and windows of the building. Tsuna joined him carefully with his own backpack. 'Am- am I really being clingy like he said?' Yamamoto really couldn't remember much of anything of the argument except for the same few statements that kept on rotating over and over in his mind. 'And what the hell did he mean by I don't know anything about the way he is? It's like he's been keeping some big-ass secret from me and then is expecting me to read his mind or something.'

Still, he couldn't brush the insecurity that there was a good deal that he didn't know about Gokudera despite spending day in and day out with the always sarcastic boy. 'Ah fuck, he's totally messing with my mind now and he's not even here!'

He suddenly turned to Tsuna. Yamamoto opened his mouth, and then closed it, and then opened it again. "…Hey, so you really don't think that, that Gokudera's been acting funny around me recently?"

Tsuna immediately took on an expression that said, "Oh please not again, I don't know what the right answer is, don't ask me!" but dutifully tried to think of something to say all the same. "…Well," he began slowly, watching for Yamamoto's reaction, "I think he may have been acting a bit odd lately, but, you know, I just figured that maybe he was feeling off. Like, sick, I mean." He nodded to himself. "You know the migraine he got (12. Chapter 12) and then he ended up at the nurse's office that one time before that (8. Chapter 8), remember? And, and you know that this cold's going around a bit and all."

"…Wait, so you think he's just been acting weird cuz he's _sick?_"

Tsuna shrugged and made a quick frown. "I don't know; maybe. People sometimes act different, get in bad moods, when they're getting sick, right?"

Yamamoto really didn't want to think that he'd gotten into the worst fight he'd had in at least the past five years, because of some temporary biological reason that maybe Gokudera couldn't help himself with. "I _don't_ think he was sick. He'd have told us if he was."

"Well, according to you, he hasn't been telling you a lot of things."

"Even so, he's _not sick_," Yamamoto growled, stressing his voice. He himself wasn't sure why he was being so insistent on the matter. "He's just being whiny or, or something. He _wasn't_ sick yesterday, alright? He was just being bitchy."

Getting uncomfortable again and not wanting to take sides, Tsuna made a face and shifted in his seat. "I don't know, you tell me," he said, at a loss on what to say while staying aggravatingly neutral. "You haven't even told me what you guys even fought about yesterday."

"I _told_ you, it's- it's _com_plicated. And I really can't even remember how it started. And, and I think it's just really that we've just been spending too much time around each other. It was about time to take a freaking _break_," Yamamoto said, already sorry that he'd stupidly brought up the topic of the fight to a boy who he had no desire to explain anything to and who he was sure wouldn't understand even if he tried.

He shook his head roughly and twisted around in his seat to look out the window to the football field below.

'Well, you're taking that freaking break from him now, aren't you?' he said to himself cynically, letting out a sharp breath. 'And you're _so _damn happy about it.'

Outside, a teacher had just stepped out, one arm wrapped around himself and his coat, to ring the bell for the middle schoolers to go back to class after recess. The kids trooped in more or less obediently, kicking at a somewhat flat soccer ball a few last times before clearing the field. When the kids had left, the field was left almost completely abandoned except for a small pack that moved together to their regular corner of the field for their after-lunch smoke.

'They're there everyday. All together like that," Yamamoto thought, a little sullenly, a little bitter. "Have to be, since they're addicted."

The boys below shoved at each other playfully over some unimportant inside joke and then shared the same shielded flame to light up. Yamamoto watched them then step back, choose their own individual patches of sky to stare at, and breathe. 'It doesn't matter what happens – no matter what the weather, or what their conditions, or what they think of or feel about each other, they'll always find each other at that corner of the field at this time of the day.'

He leaned in closer to the window, close enough so that his breath fogged up the glass, and felt something like jealousy.

'Why did he skip lunch? Does he really not want to be around me? Am I overthinking this?' Yamamoto, for some reason, suddenly remembered an article he had read long ago that said how couples who generally sleep together would be destroying their relationship if they slept apart after a fight. 'We always, always, eat lunch together. Why did he skip lunch?'

He turned around and slumped back down on the bench. It was too puzzlingly upsetting.

'Why did he have to skip lunch?'

/

* * *

Despite his remaining doubts about Gokudera's absence at lunchtime, Yamamoto felt positively scared to go inside the locker room.

"Oh, you don't have to, you know," he had protested to Tsuna, desperately hoping that Tsuna would pick up the hint and not hang around.

"No, I really don't mind," Tsuna had told him sincerely. "Uh, since it's sort of freezing out these days, I'll wait around the first floor hallway benches, okay? Text me when it's over."

Since he had about two minutes to run down and get changed for practice, Yamamoto had just shot a hurried "Oh, okay" over his shoulder and dashed downstairs.

But now he was moving very close to the door of the locker room, and knowing Gokudera, it really would be unusual for him to not show up to sports practice when it was linked to his school record, which he was very proud of. Yamamoto had expected himself to pause, for at least a moment, before pushing open the locker room door, but found himself walking in without a hitch in his step instead.

He wasn't quite surprised or relieved to see a bunch of stacked clothes that he could easily identify as Gokudera's next to Gokudera's backpack in the usual corner of the room.

'Oh, so he _has_ come to school today,' Yamamoto really realized for the first time. And just a bit hesitantly, though he stayed a good step more away from Gokudera's things than normal, he changed and put his casual clothes next to the other boy's.

Knowing that he wouldn't have to worry about Gokudera until at least two hours from now when practice ended, Yamamoto followed some of the other members of his team out the changing room to fill up his water bottle at the water fountain.

When he had waited his turn, filled his water bottle, and turned around as he started putting the cap on, he saw Gokudera leaning against a wall at the end of the hallway.

Gokdera had apparently been standing there waiting for him, because as soon as he had turned, he pushed off the wall and strode over to him, his bow held in his right hand in such a firm grip and with such a blank, serious expression that Yamamoto had an irrational moment in which he wondered if Gokudera was going to try to beat him up with the bow.

But the archer stopped dead a good two arms' lengths away. "Uhm…," he said and then sniffed. Embarrassed and feeling a hot flush, though it didn't outwardly show, he quickly said, "Hey."

"Hey." Yamamoto twisted the cap of his bottle back open and took a sip of water to fake coolness.

"Hey, about…" Gokudera glanced at the other boys around and tilted his head slightly to the side, more aware of his surroundings than usual. "…You know. I was thinking…" He tapped the tip of his bow on the tiled floor. "Uhm, can we talk after practice?"

"Yeah, okay," said Yamamoto a bit too quickly. "I mean…Okay."

"Alright," Gokudera said, and then looked at his watch. "See ya," he said, not insincerely, as he unceremoniously dashed out the building door without a further word to make it to his practice on time.

And when a boy nearby awkwardly snickered a little in the direction Gokudera had gone and said, "What was that?", Yamamoto, mind suddenly scattered, couldn't help but wonder the same.

/

* * *

When Gokudera, after practice, noticed that Yamamoto's clothes were in more or less their usual spot next to his on the locker room bench, he felt a twinge of gratefulness.

'Alright, so everything's going to turn out more or less okay,' he thought, but not without his mind working furiously to try to figure out what he was supposed to say during the imminent talk that he had called.

He quickly changed and, though he felt ridiculous, shut himself up in the handicapped restroom stall to buy a bit of private thinking time. 'Should I come out or not?' he asked himself again for the umpteenth time as he paced in the tight space. 'I really really really do _not_ want to do this announcement-style.'

'And I'm sure he won't reject me. I mean, or at least, I've never _heard_ him say any homophobic slurs before. But then...I've never heard him cuss out someone the way he did to me last night either...' All the same, for a reason he couldn't quite place, Gokudera felt sure, as he briefed over his thoughts from the last night, that Yamamoto really wasn't the type to reject some five years of friendship for something that should be very unimportant. 'I just…it's so fucking _stupid_, but I just don't want to be treated differently. But I _know_ that I don't want to be living a lie and hiding like some fucking loser closet-case.'

He'd barely been in the cubicle for a minute and a half when he heard the first members of the baseball team come into the gymnasium building. He waited a little until he felt sure that Yamamoto must be in the changing room and went out from the stall.

'But is it being a closet-case at all when I don't actively lie?' he asked himself as he walked over to the vending machine, starting to get philosophical with his internal questioning again. 'Because, I mean, it's not like I was closeted before I hit puberty or something and it's not like straight people have to come out, so it's really quite unfair that I should have to come out at all. Bit of a double standard. As long as I don't pretend to look at girls or something—and I've never really done that seriously anyway—I should be okay.'

Hoping that his small peace offering wouldn't be rejected, Gokudera fished in his pockets for change and popped a soda out of the vending machine for Yamamoto. 'Ah, it doesn't even matter. Before I do anything else, I have to get past the fight, first.'

Now all there was to do was wait and then play it by ear.

He didn't have to wait long.

Yamamoto came out of the changing room, one hand stroking his slightly damp hair into place as though he was doing some last-minute preparation for an important date.

"How...how was practice?" Gokudera asked, at the same time weakly congratulating himself for sticking to the regular old script they exchanged after practices.

"It was…it was good," Yamamoto said, stopping a few steps away but not too far away to be distant. "Yours?"

"Good enough. Hey, uh…want this?" Gokudera held out the soda can halfway and looked slightly down, not daring to meet the other boy's eyes and not knowing that said other boy was feeling much the same.

"Oh, yeah, sure. Thanks." Yamamoto reached his hand out a little, and then withdrew it a little, and then reached out a little again, not sure how he was supposed to take the can. It would have been comic if it hadn't been so confusing.

Gokudera, too, briefly wondered if he should keep this quasi-comfortable distance between them and gently lob the can to Yamamoto, but then awkwardly shuffled up and directly handed the can to him, still looking at the ground. "…The fizz, you know," he mumbled as an excuse.

"Oh right, yeah." Yamamoto looked down and then up. "Uhm, are you getting one?"

"Uh," Gokudera noticed suddenly that he was speaking in an unusually low tone. He cleared his throat. "No, I think I'm okay."

"You- you sure? I mean, I can get you one."

"Oh. Well…" Gokudera worried the straps of his backpack. "…thanks, then."

"Yeah." Yamamoto found a slightly crumpled bill from a pocket in his backpack and fed it into the machine. The buttons on the machine lit up with little glowing red points. He gestured to the buttons to let Gokudera pick what he wanted.

Gokudera really didn't care for a soda or any drink at all for that matter, but felt awkwardly glad that Yamamoto was doing this for him at all, even if it was only out a basic spirit of reciprocation. He picked the same soda as the one he had gotten for Yamamoto.

When the machine dropped the selected soda down with a muted clunk, Yamamoto bent down to get it. "Uhm… where were you at lunch?" he asked, as he slowly got back up.

"Lunch? Oh, right, lunch. I was, uh, down in the auditorium, actually. Some kid was playing the piano there, and, I was just, you know. Yeah." Gokudera sniffed with embarrassment again. He'd never felt more ineloquent in his life, especially considering how nastily quick he had been at snapping back replies the last night. "The kid, he was pretty good."

Yamamoto handed the can to him. "You're not hungry?"

Gokudera shrugged, playing it cool even as he cradled the can in his cupped hands. "Some. It's okay."

The other boys had, by this point, all changed and were walking to and fro, making a bit of noise, in the same hallway as the two. Somehow, without giving each other any particular signs, they both shouldered their bags properly and walked out of the building doors into the cold air outside.

A couple of steps out, though, Yamamoto slowed down. "Tsuna said that he'd be waiting at the first floor benches," he said apologetically, wishing again, harder and more strangely now, that Tsuna had taken the hint before and left.

"Oh. Well," Gokudera briefly waved his hand towards the school building in a gesture meaning, "You can go, then. I…guess I'll just wait around here."

"No, wait. I'll text him," Yamamoto said hurriedly, holding out a hand to Gokudera instinctively to keep him from leaving.

_Come down. Gokudera's here_, he texted to Tsuna, fingers so jerky with excitement that he made about three type-o mistakes for even just this short message.

It was extremely fortunate that Tsuna ran down within the minute that the text was sent, because otherwise the two might have stood in the street in thick silence. As it was, the two were both still thinking over how they had just gotten past their first interaction after the Fight when Tsuna sprinted over to them.

"Gokudera!" he half-panted half-exclaimed. "You okay?"

"Well, _yeah_," Gokudera said, forgetting himself for a moment and slipping into his normal sarcasm. "It's not like I got hit by a sixteen wheeler last night." Then he blinked in slight alarm and glanced at Yamamoto as though expecting some sort of harsh rebuke.

"Yeah, no, that's great!" Tsuna said, breaking into a smile and gasping a little out of relief as well. "That's really great!"

Gokudera had to let out a short laugh at that one, mostly out of relief at being taken back. He sniffed again and wiped his nose with his sleeve, this time without feeling so mortified. "Well, thanks guys. It's good to know you didn't want me dead." He glanced at Yamamoto again at his last statement.

"Well, of course not," Yamamoto told him, a little gruffly but more careful than before, now, that he saw how careful Gokudera was being around him. "Uhm, come on," he said, still feeling a uncertain as to how he and Gokudera stood with each other, but also a weird kind of pity for the other boy, who had obviously suffered. "You must be really hungry. Let's get you something to eat."

/

* * *

**Right. So this chapter was... a bit of a weird one.**

**In case someone missed it, the Fight is in no way completely over. Well, in a way it is, but I see fights as not being over until some sort of common resolution has been found and put on the table, and this certainly has not happened (this should have been apparent).**

**Someone please tell me how you think the character development is going. This is, I think, very important in this chapter (and the following chapters).**

**Thank you, and please _Review_.**


	22. Extended Author's Note Apology

**Extended Author's Note:**

* * *

I know that I'm not supposed to use a chapter space for notes like this, but I'll change and switch the document properly once I'm ready to upload the latest chapter (which will be (relatively) soon, I promise!)

_[I know. Killer. You thought it was a new chapter and it's not. But hey, at least you're getting to know me, right?]_

It's been I-don't-know-how-long since I've last uploaded, and I know that my gratuitous lateness practically ruined this whole story experience for everybody. If any of my old readers are still around to read this, I can't thank you enough for sticking around and remembering that this exists. I know that with all the shit going on in my life, even I practically forgot that I was writing this.

I've probably lost a lot (if not most) of my readers for disappearing the fuck off the face of the virtual writing planet, but serves me right I suppose.

Several factors went into and continue to go into the reason why I haven't uploaded for so long:

The most concrete ones are that I was submitting applications and doing interviews for colleges (I have now decided where I am going) and also that it has been and is exam season (AP tests and regular school exams).

The less concrete, but rather more significant, reason for not uploading is due to some negative personal circumstances, which have impacted my viewpoints on matters quite a bit. Because - as has proved both fortunate and unfortunate - I put myself into my characters, I have been struggling to write the characters and therefore the story in recent weeks because I felt that I couldn't relate to the characters in the same way as before.*

And so I kept on writing and getting frustrated and deleting and not publishing because I didn't want to upload something that I wasn't reasonably pleased with.

_HOWEVER_, all this being said to cover my ass, as some might put it, I am still very much writing this story and I have never considered abandoning it. After calming down and getting myself back in order, I am now feeling more stable and am confident that I can scratch up something decent without taking an eternity (or more of an eternity) to do it.

Because I can't make any promises just yet when I'm still taking exams, I can't say definitely that I will upload within a week, considering that I have trashed everything and am starting completely fresh with the new chapter. But I will definitely write and upload ASAP after exams and after I graduate out of high school.

Again, thank you so much to all of you who are still with me.

\

**With all sincerity,**

**Jaime [TheLuciferPerson]**

* * *

/

*Anyone who's messaged me or had a correspondence with me about the characters would know that the characters are, in fact, hardly based on canon at all. I'm always bewildered when readers tell me that they like my story because I keep my characters "in character" with canon – the general personalities are vaguely reminiscent, because they were partially inspired, but "Gokudera" especially does not resemble the character of the same name in the manga (he's me from a few years ago, to be perfectly frank).


End file.
